


Someone You'd Admire

by transistor_robot



Series: Someone You'd Admire [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-05-12 12:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 23,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5666473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transistor_robot/pseuds/transistor_robot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Amy and Rory drag the Doctor into a mystery he wants nothing to do with, the three of them find themselves stuck with Jenny, a tiny version of the Doctor, complete with mild insanity and an abandonment complex. Also, she's not supposed to be alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1, Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hellooo! This is the beginning of a new story from yours truly. For a bit of background information, read Soldier's Grin, but it's not necessary to understand this story. Some of you may recognize bits of it, but I swear to you it is new, updated, and even cooler than the original. It is epic, it is touching, it is everything you could ever possibly want from a piece of Doctor Who fanfiction.
> 
> Perhaps I'm overselling it a bit. Read it and get back to me.
> 
> There are several (warranted) f-bombs and a brief reproductive biology lesson in this story, so if that sort of thing bothers you, consider yourself warned.
> 
> Finally, I'd like to thank my lovely beta Cupcakeflake for all her nitpicking and for helping me find solutions to problems that I didn't even know I had with this story. She is amazing and you should all follow her on tumblr.

 

 

It's a rash decision, going over to see Sarah. Possibly even a stupid one. She's entirely aware of that, and yet somehow she can't bring herself to turn around and return to her nearly emptied flat. She's spent the last few weeks slowly and efficiently dismantling her life.

Despite the fact that she's assembled a list of all the reasons she shouldn't be going over to see Sarah, she's still getting off the bus near her flat, walking the half-mile to the front door, and ringing the doorbell. As she waits for Sarah to respond, she realizes exactly how anxious she really is. Maybe it's because this is the first time she's stopped moving since she made up her mind to visit; there's something about momentary pauses that make you unable to keep from thinking.

It turns out that her dread is well-founded as the speaker beside the doorbell buzzes loudly as the door unlocks. All without a single word from Sarah.

Jenny trudges up the staircase to Sarah's flat. She's trying not to feel like she's walking to her death, but it's really not working. Just as her hand reaches up to knock, the door swings open, and an extremely pissed-off Sarah is standing in the doorway.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"Er, around," Jenny replies quietly, hand stroking the end of her plaited hair.

"Around? You disappeared off the face of the earth for two bloody months. We thought you were dead."

When Jenny doesn't reply, Sarah continues. "You missed Christmas."

"I was in London," Jenny replies immediately.

That would have been a reasonable answer for anyone who didn't know Jenny. And Sarah knew Jenny very well. "Why were you in London?"

"I was looking for someone." Another uncharacteristically vague answer.

Sarah raises her eyebrows in a question. In response, Jenny jerks her head, indicating the interior of Sarah's flat. With a sigh to the ceiling, Sarah stands aside as Jenny enters the flat.

"How's Josh?" Jenny asks as she surveys the mess of toys and books on the sofa and coffee table.

"No, you're not. You're not fucking doing that. You are're going to tell me what the hell is going on. I've been down your flat, I've rang you I don't know how many times, I've even called the bloody police, and-"

Wait. "You called the police?"

"Well, I was about to!"

Despite the situation, Jenny can't help but be slightly hurt. "Two months and you didn't call the police," she stated, raising an eyebrow.

"I thought you were angry with me! Or that you'd suddenly turned into a giant prick," said Sarah, facing away from Jenny as she walked to the kitchenette.

Jenny, for her part, is more than slightly taken aback. "Why would I be angry with you?"

Sarah, who had been just about to fill the kettle at the sink, stopped to look directly at Jenny. "So you're not angry."

"No," she replies, as though that were a patently bizarre thing to be. There's a pause as Sarah fumes silently. Jenny notices the kettle. "So, are we having tea?"

At that, the dam holding Sarah's fury breaks, and she slams the plastic kettle down on the countertop. "You sit the fuck down and explain yourself."

Jenny's eyes widen, and she pulls out a metal chair. It screeches against the floor. She then sits down wordlessly at the table, which is arguably the best decision she's made since she's gotten here.

Sarah joins her at the table. "So. What's going on?" she asks, but it's really more of a demand than a question.

Jenny surveys the older woman, taking in her every feature. Her hands are clasped together and resting against her mouth, as though she's thinking of what to say. Which is partially true. She knows what she would like to tell Sarah. The truth is what she deserves, and it's what Jenny came here intending to give, but now that it's time to piece the words together…she suddenly can't think of what to say. She thinks briefly of her father, as she has been doing more often as of late. Jenny couldn't imagine him ever being at such a complete loss for words. Another way she's different, and not for the better.

Eventually she finds a way to start. "How long have we known each other?" she asks, the sound of her voice jarring in the tense silence.

That gives Sarah pause. Given the situation, it's a seemingly bizarre question. "Years," she replies.

"Yeah, you were a kid." Jenny's attention drifts away again, to thoughts of the sixteen year old girl Sarah had once been.

Sarah's mind's eye has also wandered, judging by how she's staring into the middle distance, and Jenny continues talking.

"It's been a while, hasn't it?" Jenny says. She briefly pauses as she tries to think of something. "Oh, how long? Thirteen? Yeah, thirteen years, so yeah, I think I can say we've known each other a while."

Sarah nods, looking like she'd quite like to know where Jenny's going with this.

Jenny smiles at her, an affectionate and proud smile. "And you've come such a long way. You're a nurse, and a hell of a mum. Remember when Josh was born? I remember you being so scared at becoming a mum. And now you're like a super-mum. You even manage to 'mum' me. And I'm older than you."

Sarah starts to protest. "You're not older than me."

"I was older than you when we met."

She laughs slightly. "No, you weren't."

And then she thinks on it. "No, wait. You were older. Are older."

Jenny watches her best friend slowly parse the data, and when she seems to become confused, Jenny asks gently, "Do you have any pictures of me?"

They both know the answer. Among their small group of friends and acquaintances, Jenny's notorious for avoiding the camera. Except...

"Yeah, actually, I think I've got one."

Jenny's momentarily surprised, but recovers quickly. "Would you fetch it for me?"

Sarah gets up, still not quite sure where the conversation's going, and goes over to a small display cupboard to pull out a photo album. She brings it back to the table, rifling through the pages to a particular page. On that page is a group photograph, taken at the hospital the day Josh was born. In the centre sit the mother and son. Family and close friends surround them, faces beaming.

Off to one side stands Jenny, smiling at the people posing. She's a little blurry, as though she were in the middle of flicking her plait round to the back of her head. She looks happy, but uncomfortable.

They both look at the photograph for a moment, and then Jenny speaks. "How old do I look in that picture?"

Sarah looks a bit closer. "Twenty, maybe?"

Jenny nods. "And how old do I look now?"

Sarah stops, as though she's just realized something. "About twenty."

Jenny nods again. "And how old's Josh?"

"He's seven."

Jenny leans back in her chair slightly, waiting for the penny to drop. Sarah, for her part, is looking between the girl in the photograph and the one in front of her, searching for some indication of ageing.

"You can't be twenty-seven," she finally states, voice flat as she tries to understand.

"I'm not. I'm more like eighty-three. Ninety-three. Maybe ninety-six."

Sarah's about to say something, when Jenny continues talking.

"Yeah, ninety-six. I came here in 1907."

Whatever Sarah was going to say has been completely erased from her mind. "So, you're…"

"Ninety-six years old. Yes," Jenny says quickly.

"But…"

"But what?"

"But you can't be!"

"Yes, I can. Not human."

"So you're ninety-six years old," Sarah states, waiting for Jenny to flinch, for her to smile and say that she's playing some sort of bad joke.

Despite how much Sarah wants her to, Jenny doesn't crack a smile. "Yes," she replies, without breaking Sarah's gaze.

"And you're not human."

"No. No, I'm not."

Sarah levels a sharp look at Jenny, waiting to see if she'll break. She doesn't. At that point Sarah makes an executive decision. "Get the fuck out my flat."

Wait. No. It's not supposed to go like that. "Sarah, wait. I can prove it."

Sarah's genuinely angry now. She stands up and begins walking to the door. "Get out. I can't believe you'd try to do something like this. First you disappear, and then this? It's not funny, Jenny. It's This is cruel."

"No, wait. I've got two hearts. I can prove it."

Sarah moves to drag Jenny out of the chair and forcibly remove her from the flat, but Jenny grabs Sarah's hand and puts it against her chest. "Feel my heartbeat?" she asks.

She does feel Jenny's heartbeat. But something's off about it. It's a bit fast, for one thing, but-

"It's in the wrong place, isn't it?" Jenny asks.

Sarah's looking at her hand, which is feeling the strong pulse of Jenny's heart.

Jenny continues. "That's 'cause I've got two of them." And she moves Sarah's hand to the other side of her chest. A second strong heartbeat.

Sarah then immediately grabs Jenny's wrist to feel her pulse. It's abnormally fast. Almost double the normal speed. She should be dead, or at least on strong medication.

Jenny smiles at Sarah's reaction. "It's fast 'cause there's two of them."

And it clicks.

"You're not human."

"No, no I'm not."

Sarah boggles.

Jenny smiles awkwardly. "Sorry."


	2. Part 1, Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Chapter two, people. Jenny and Sarah continue with their discussion, and the Doctor and gang discuss lunch.
> 
> As always, thanks muchly to my beta, Cupcakeflake. You deserve the whole cupcake, not just a flake.

"Why, then," Sarah asks, "did you decide to tell me? I mean, how many times have you done this? You're one hundred years old."

Jenny sighs into her cup of tea, watching the whirlpool form and dissipate. The question was a valid one, and easily answered. The trouble was in the questions that she knew Sarah was only partially asking.

She looks up at Sarah, who's watching her form an answer, and something in the look makes Jenny feel older than she'd ever felt. "Because I'm tired," she says plaintively.

Sarah nods. Old was something she could understand, could sympathize with.

Jenny smiles slightly, and she breaks away from Sarah's gaze. "I mean, there's only so much time I can stay in one place," Jenny says, absentmindedly looking at the clock on the wall. "Even if you make a point of avoiding cameras, people still start to notice it eventually. The aging."

"Or the lack thereof," Sarah says, stirring her tea.

Jenny laughs sharply. It's a bit too loud, a bit too merry, and the sound is jarring in the small flat. "Exactly," she says, pointing at Sarah with her spoon.

Sarah, for her part, isn't interested in lightening the mood. Jenny's grin fades under her scrutiny. She levels a sincere look at Sarah.

"I'm sorry."

"You had better be."

"I am, I-"

"Josh has been asking for you every day," Sarah bursts out, every inch the worried mother, "I didn't know what to tell him, 'cause I didn't even know if you were al-"

"Wait. Where is Josh?" Jenny interrupts.

Sarah stops, taken aback by the shift in conversation. "He's at the museum. On a class trip."

"Yeah, but it's late, isn't it?"

The two of them look out the window. At some point during their conversation, the sun had set. Far too late for a class trip to be out.

Just as Jenny's about to ask Sarah if he'd called, Sarah leaps up from the table.

"Oh, shit!"

"You were supposed to fetch him, weren't you?" Jenny's trying not to smile.

"Yeah, but then you stopped by-"

"No need to worry. I'll fetch him. It'll be a surprise."

Sarah pauses for a moment, debating. Jenny puts out her hand and wiggles her fingers.

"Keys. I'll need your keys," Jenny says, in response to Sarah's confused look.

"What happened to your car?'

"Sold it," Jenny shrugs.

Sarah sighs, and stands to fetch her handbag. "Bring him straight back," she says to Jenny.

Jenny can't manage to hold back a slight smirk.

"I mean it. He's got school tomorrow. You can't go and take him for ice cream or whatever."

Sarah drops the keys into Jenny's waiting hand. Jenny grins at her. "No ice cream, I promise."

"Seriously. He'll be up all night."

Jenny cocks an eyebrow in response. She manages to resist the urge to remind Sarah of her age, but somehow the sardonic eyebrow slips through.

"So," she says instead, "exactly how long ago were you supposed to pick him up? I need to know how apologetic I need to make you sound."

Sarah's briefly annoyed at Jenny's tone, but she glances at the clock over the kitchen table anyway. Best not to disturb the newly constructed peace. "Er, about fifteen minutes ago."

"Right then. Not that apologetic." Jenny says as she breezes out the door.

As the door closes, Sarah wonders if she's ever going to manage to forgive Jenny. Briefly she wonders if she even should. She stares at the back of the door for a moment longer, then goes to clean up the tea.

 

* * *

  
Somewhere in the depths of the TARDIS, there was a large crash.

"I'm fine!"

That was more than enough for the Doctor. He went back to doing the thing he was doing, whatever that was. Amy looked up.

"Sure about that?" she called.

"Thought it was the kitchen," Rory called back. There was a brief pause as something squeaked and thudded on the floor. "It's just a cupboard."

Amy frowned at the Doctor. "Do we have a kitchen?"

He looked up at her, face screwed up in thought, without stopping whatever he was doing. "I did have, don't know where it got off to. Why would I need a kitchen?"

"Eating, mostly?"

From the depths of the TARDIS came Rory's voice. "You don't have a kitchen."

"Like I said to Amy, I did, but now I don't," the Doctor rejoined, as Rory entered the control room, slightly flustered and with a portable radio in his hand. He set the radio down on an empty space of the console, where the Doctor proceeded to glare at it.

"How do you eat? Do you eat?" asked Rory, incredulously.

The Doctor scoffed indignantly. "Of course I eat. That's ridiculous. You've seen me eat!"

"Do you eat out all the time? Because that's really not healthy." As a nurse, he felt obliged to say something like that. Amy, meanwhile, moved the portable radio to the jumpseat.

"How do you think I keep this handsome physique up and running? Photosynthesis?"

"Doctor!" Amy snapped.

"Hmm?"

"We're hungry. Bring us somewhere."

The Doctor's face lit up with understanding, as if the idea had not occurred to him over the course of the conversation. "Oooh, I know this little place on Exilon that has these simply divine blue pastry things-"

"Somewhere with human food." His face crumpled a bit.

The Doctor paused a second. "You people are boring," he remarked. "Don't you want to explore the world of food, widen your culinary horizons, embark on an epicurean voyage to-"

"I'm in the mood for a hamburger," Rory stated, bringing the Doctor's epicurean voyage around the English language to an abrupt halt. He was good like that.

"I wash my hands of you." The Doctor turned from the pair of them, and proceeded to do a thing on the TARDIS that looked almost exactly like the other thing he had been doing earlier, but in fact was something entirely different.

 


	3. Part 1, Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Here's chapter 3! It hasn't been beta'd, so don't go blaming my lovely beta cupcakeflake for any mistakes.
> 
> Thank you, as always, for reading this story.

Parking, as always, is a bitch. It doesn't help that the parking garage is full to bursting. Despite that, Jenny's still looking forward to the museum. Even if it is just to pick up Josh. She can count on one hand the times she's visited this particular museum. It's a bit odd, she thinks, how little she's managed to get out and visit the sights of the city she's lived in for so long. She remembers that she loved this museum the last time she visited. Maybe she can talk Josh into checking out one of the exhibits before they leave. Then again, Sarah explicitly stated 'no ice cream'. Of course, Jenny thinks, museum exhibits are almost certainly not the same thing as ice cream.

She's never picked up anyone from an event, so she's not quite surely what to do. When she enters the lobby, she mills around awkwardly, keeping an eye out for large groups of schoolchildren. Of course, she's also trying to make it look like she's not trying to look down the hallways into the exhibits that she hasn't paid to see.

Normally, if Jenny were in the position to visit a museum, she'd be more excited than someone her apparent or actual age probably should be, but today's somehow different. There's no real reason for it. It's a strong undercurrent of a feeling, vaguely akin to dread, but more instinctual than logical. Jenny hasn't felt like this in quite some time, and that alone is enough to discomfit her. She also has no idea what it means. He probably knows, she thinks, and then she quickly abandons that line of thought. Not the time.

While Jenny's trying to see through a glass door leading to a hallway filled with what looks like ancient weapons, someone approaches her.

"Are you here to pick up your kid?" he asks. Jenny swings around to look at him, and the man quickly apologizes.

"I'm sorry, miss, I thought you were older," the man says, smiling sheepishly.

Jenny waves a hand. "No worries," she says, smiling. "Actually, you're right. I'm here to fetch a kid. Seven years old. Ginger. Loud. About yea high," she says, holding her hand up to just below her collarbone. "I thought he'd be here with his class. I was running late."

"Mrs Beal's class?"

"Er, yeah, I think so." In actuality, Jenny has no idea what Josh's teacher is called, but she's willing to bet it's Mrs Beal.

"My son's in her class, too. I came here to fetch him. Haven't seen them," the man says, shrugging. "I think they might have left early."

"Yeah, that's probably it," she replies, but her mind's elsewhere.

"They didn't tell us they were leaving early, though," the man continues, mustering up a bit of annoyance at the situation. "I'm about to head to the school, maybe they're there. Honestly, I've half a mind to complain."

"Mmm." Jenny's not about to get involved in that sort of thing. But she does think of something else. "Hey. Have you seen any other parents?"

"No," he says, confused.

Jenny raises an eyebrow. "You didn't think that's odd?"

"Well, no."

She only just manages to suppress the urge to call him an idiot. If the situation were less potentially dire, she'd be rather proud of her restraint. "Right. Well. I'm going to have a look round, just to check."

The man looks surprised. "You can't go into the exhibits."

Jenny ignores him and starts toward the ancient weapons exhibit.

"The museum's about to close," he explains.

Jenny looks over her shoulder at the man. "I thought you were going to say it's because I didn't pay."

"Well, yes, that too, but really. The museum's about to close."

Jenny realized that she had no real response to that. Well, other than the idea she's currently nursing. It's not yet substantial enough to be an actual plan, but it's definitely in existence. Not for the first time, she quickly makes the decision to eschew logic in favour of potential adventure. After all, if museums are cool, they must be even cooler at night. And something's telling her that Josh hasn't left the museum.

"Tell you what," she says, "you head to the school and complain, and I'll have a quick look round before the doors close, and I'll meet you back at the school."

The man gives her a look that suggests that he doesn't think too highly of her intelligence or maturity. Jenny does not find this amusing.

"Fine," the man says. "I'll meet you there."

Jenny doesn't even bother looking back to see if he leaves before eagerly heading into the depths of the museum.

Ten minutes later, she's pretty sure of of two things. First, she's pretty sure she's been locked in overnight. The second is that she's probably lost. The first thing is exciting, the second marginally less so.

She's not sure when she left the ancient weapons exhibit, but she must have, seeing as how there's a giant rock in the centre of the room. It's a weird rock. Very smooth, like it was polished by sand. Perhaps it was underwater at one point. She looks around for an explanatory plaque, but there doesn't seem to be one. She stands back further, taking the scene in.

After looking at the axes hanging on the walls, it quickly becomes clear to Jenny that she's still in the ancient weapons exhibit. Then, she thinks, why is a giant rock in the centre of the room? It makes no sense.

She looks down to see her hand outstretched, reaching to the rock. She doesn't remember that. Suddenly that sense of animalistic dread is back, stronger than before. Something is wrong with this rock.

And then she sees it. And she knows where Josh is. She reaches out a hand to stroke the rock's surface and-


	4. Part 1, Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that I left the last chapter at something of a cliffhanger. I now realize that this could be perceived as somewhat evil. This is me showing mercy.

-she pulls her hand back. Best not. There's something strange about the rock that she can't quite understand. There's something about it that makes her want to touch it. Something about it that makes her hand reach out of its own accord. That makes her look down, resolving to keep an eye on her arms. The compulsion she feels to touch it hasn't abated, but honestly the idea of not having control of her own limbs has her more worried than anything else.

She's safe, she tells herself, so long as she stays far enough away from the rock, and keeps an eye on her hands. She looks down, and is relieved to see them dangling at her sides.

It's a mystery, but not important right now. The most important thing is finding Josh, she tells herself, and she turns to leave the room. Maybe he's in another exhibit.

Jenny gives the strange rock one last glance, and notices something she hadn't seen before. There's a carving of what looks like the outline of a hand protruding from the surface of the rock. It doesn't really look like a palaeolithic carving, however. In the moonlight, the smoothness of the rock makes the small carving look more like an unborn child's hand stretching in its mother's womb. Jenny vividly remembers Josh doing the exact thing, seven years ago.

The thought of Josh reminds her of what she's here to do, and she briefly chastises herself for getting distracted. Again. She's never been one to resist a good mystery, but Josh is most likely somewhere in this museum. It is her responsibility to find him and bring him home. Without ice cream. With that in mind, she walks to the doorway.

Before she takes a final step out of the room, she feels a strong compulsion to turn and look at the rock again. One last look, she thinks, won't do any harm. She manages to ignore the feeling, and leaves the room.

* * *

 

Approximately two days and seven miles away, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory entered a pub.

"So. A pub. Here's a pub. A nice, boring pub," The Doctor stated, waving his hand around in the air in an unintentional imitation of Vanna White. "Are you happy, Rory Williams?" he asked, in a tone that implied that he was far from happy.

"Quite." Rory had learned that the best way to annoy the Doctor was to say as little as possible. That and touch his screwdriver, but he figured the screwdriver was far too much of a symbol of certain other things for him to feel remotely comfortable touching it.

The three of them sat down at an ordinary-looking booth, and ordered hamburgers. Rory ordered a pint, as he reckoned he'd probably want one eventually.

Amy looked up at the television suspended over the bar. "They haven't got the football on," she remarked.

"Odd, that." Considering the time period they were in (the mid 2000s, according to the size of the television) and place they were in (somewhere near Birmingham, if the barmaid's accent was local), the odds were likely that a typical pub would not be showing football were astronomically low. Well, not astronomically low. Still, low.

Rory then realized his inner dialogue was starting to sound like the Doctor's outer dialogue. He whimpered softly inside his head.

The Doctor beamed at Amy. "Football! I did that. It was lovely. Remember that, Amy?"

"No."

"Right, you were in the TARDIS." He took a big bite of hamburger. "And Rory didn't exist," he noted, gesturing at Rory with the hamburger.

"Oh, I remember that," Amy said darkly. She grabbed a napkin and leaned across the table to wipe up the stray bits of the Doctor's hamburger.

"Funny story," the Doctor continued, waving his hamburger around, "I thought it had to do with sticks, and then-"

Amy then abruptly shushed him, her attention suddenly on the television behind him. The Doctor put down his hamburger and twisted around in his seat. Rory looked up from his pint.

On the television behind him, a generic newscaster-y looking woman with aggressively large shoulder-pads was talking about shocking new developments on a recent local hostage crisis. The Doctor knew this because it said so on the screen.

"The story behind this Tuesday's museum hostage crisis has taken on new depths as more information comes out about the identity of the mysterious hero," said shoulder-pad lady, with the detached soullessness of a newscaster who deserved much better than a local television station.

The Doctor couldn't help but exclaim, "Ooh, mysterious hero!"

Rory couldn't help but drawl, "Ooh, mysterious hero."

"The name of the girl who, according to witnesses, managed to single-handedly end the hostage crisis, was discovered to be Jennifer Smith, a local resident."

At that point, the screen switched to a blurry photograph of a girl. It was a rather blurry picture, obviously clipped from a much larger photograph. She was looking at something to her left, and her hand was in the middle of flicking her dark, thick plait to the back of her head.

The newscaster continued talking. "According to witnesses, Jennifer Smith passed away at the scene of the crime, but her body has not been found."

A young woman was being interviewed. "She was always there for anyone who needed it. She'd always drop everything to help. She helped me with my Josh." Her voice broke. "Without her, I couldn't have done it."

The screen then switched back to the newscaster with the shoulder-pads. "Ms Nichols is the mother of Joshua Nichols, one of the young children involved in the hostage crisis. Ms Smith was at the museum to fetch Josh. However, the identity of Ms Smith is largely unknown. Authorities have been unable to locate family members, birth records, even Ms Smith's NHS number. According to Ms Nichols, she was a student at the local university. However, there are no records of a Jennifer Smith ever having attended. Who is Jennifer Smith? If anyone has any information, please contact the police."

The newscaster disappeared, replaced by a man in a fashionably loud tie talking about the weather.

The Doctor looked at Amy. Amy looked at the Doctor. Rory looked at Amy. Then he looked at the Doctor.

"Well, that was odd," Amy said, stating the obvious.


	5. Part 1, Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter! I'm exhausted, so no long note today. Give thanks unto cupcakeflake, for she hath sweet beta-skillz.

The Doctor looked at his hamburger. Amy looked at Rory. Rory looked at his pint. It was empty.

"It's mysterious," Amy continued, like a dog at a bone. An adorable ginger dog with a bone of mysteries. A bone of adventures. A mysterious adventure bone. "Don't you think?"

"Mmm," the Doctor replied. He thought briefly about his metaphor, and then felt embarrassed by it.

Amy apparently, had simply refused to let this one go. "How are you not interested? I'm interested."

There was a brief awkward pause during which the Doctor waited to see how long it would take for Amy to figure out that he wasn't going to answer.

"It's a bit odd," Rory lamely offered. It was odd.

She grinned delightedly at him, and then shot a slightly teasing grin at the Doctor. Rory reflected on how ridiculously charming she was. "Yeah, Rory! It's odd! Don't you want to check it out?"

For the Doctor, this was less about being interested and more about not establishing a precedent. Humans. Give them an inch, et cetera. He also had absolutely no plans on spending his leisure time standing by helplessly as a young girl died in his arms. Amy simply had no grasp on the situation. Sure, he tried to save lives, and for the most part he did, but sometimes...some things were inevitable.

As per his previous rule, Rory said as little as possible, which was nothing.

Her delighted grin turned sour as she surveyed the two of them. "You two," she said. "You're ridiculous. And you-what happened to adventures?"

"We just had an adventure," the Doctor pointed out. "With the pirates and the singing."

Amy was unimpressed.

He sighed. "What do you suggest we do? It's not like there's anything we can do about it. It's over."

"You. Have. A. Time. Machine," Amy gritted out, every period in that sentence perfectly audible to the Doctor's superior sense of hearing.

Despite Amy's skillful use of punctuation, the Doctor was not deterred. "And when we get there we get to watch a young girl sacrifice her life for a group of innocents? Not my idea of a holiday."

"We can stop it," she said, obviously thinking it a reasonable argument.

"People die, Amy. There's nothing we can do."

"Oh, is this like fixed or what?"

He sat back in his booth and folded his hands. "I don't know how to handle hostage situations," he stated bluntly. "Generally I'm in them."

Rory snorted.

"So we learn." It would have been more inspiring, the Doctor thought, had it been aimed at anyone other than him. He was completely above inspirational speeches.

Rory, on the other hand, had figured out the main fallacy in Amy's argument. "It's because there's no aliens. Right, Doctor?"

He blustered a bit. "No, that is not it. Not entirely." Amy looked over at Rory with the tiniest of smiles. "My point still stands. No museum hostages," the Doctor proclaimed, slamming his fist on the table for emphasis and subsequently apologizing for the noise.

"What if there are aliens?" Amy wheedled, blinking at the Doctor.

Amy's statement inadvertently hit upon another of the Doctor's biggest pet peeves about humans. You show them one instance of aliens ingratiated in their society, waiting for the chance to fulfill their evil schemes and destroy the human race, and they assume that aliens are everywhere, plotting to take over the planet. Seriously. Like that one bloke. Took him out on the one trip, stopped an infestation of temporally shifted crocodiles from Tenochtitlan in the sewers of Boston, and now he runs a show on the History Channel. Humans.

"I mean it! There's something strange about this thing." The Doctor crossed his arms, bracing himself for the next onslaught of reasonable arguments. "Aren't your timey-wimey senses tingling?" The Doctor visibly started at the phrase 'timey-wimey senses'.

"I don't have timey-wimey senses," Actually he did, but he preferred to not call them that.

"I've got a hunch," Amy continued, "and I think that we should check it out."

"It is pretty odd," Rory stated. It was, after all, pretty odd.

"Think about it. How could a girl like that," Amy said, gesturing at the television, "take down someone holding people hostage?"

She had a point. He hated it when they had a point. They always got all smug.

"And she doesn't exist. Hasn't got any identification."

The Doctor was trying to not be interested.

"And they haven't found the body."

The Doctor didn't answer. He looked up at the television, which was again displaying the blurry photo of Jennifer Smith. He stared at the at the screen until the image disappeared. With a resigned sigh, he tore his eyes from the screen and looked directly at Amy.

"Fine."

Amy squeaked with joy.

"Just let me finish this hamburger."

* * *

 

_The thought of Josh reminds her of what she's here to do, and she briefly chastises herself for getting distracted. Again. She's never been one to resist a good mystery, but Josh is most likely somewhere in this museum. It is her responsibility to find him and bring him home. Without ice cream. With that in mind, she walks to the doorway._

_Before she takes a final step out of the room, she feels a strong compulsion to turn and look at the rock again. One last look, she thinks, won't do any harm. It's a silly urge, but a harmless one. She turns around to look at the rock, smooth and strange and out of place in the middle of the palaeolithic weapon exhibit. Completely smooth. The hand carving is gone._

_Jenny thinks she might know where Josh is._

_She approaches the rock from another angle, and sees another hand print._

_"Josh?" She calls his name, and she sees the hand move. Then an almost inaudible sound comes from the rock. Jenny leans forward. It sounds like a scream._

_Jenny's pretty sure she knows where Josh is._


	6. Part 1, Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I hope what happened last chapter made sense. I spent hours(days, really) trying to come up with the best way to depict what happened there. Sadly enough, I'm a visual sort of person, and while it generally works in my benefit while writing, it just doesn't translate to paper(web page?) as well as I'd like. The best thing I can say is that if you're confused/curious about the italic bits, go back and re-read the first part of Chapter 4(particularly the last two paragraphs), then the end of Chapter 5, then this chapter. If you've still got questions, pop me a message and I'll address it in the notes next chapter.
> 
> I also apologize for the overwhelming shortness of this chapter. It's just too important to stuff in between bits of Tardis trio time. I'll post two chapters this week to make up for it.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading and reviewing this story.

_She's burning. And she's screaming. She thinks she's screaming, anyway. But really, the burning's so painful that she's not really focusing on much else._

_She thinks about that time she saw him in that battlefield, and how strange he looked with the cut on his face and the strange coloured blood pouring down his face. She wonders if her face looks like that right now. Probably not. He had been cut. Her face is melting. There's a difference._

_Of course he'd get away with a cut on his face, or less. Of course when faced with the exact same situation he'd walk away unscathed while she'd die. Every time she's seen him, she ends up dying. And then he leaves her. Like he already knows what she is. Like it's her fault._

_Which of course it is. It's her fault she can't manage a simple spacecraft, can't save all these kids. It's her fault that she's somehow lacking. She's incomplete; a bad copy. He knew that, and then he left her here._

_And damn it, she's tried, and she couldn't do it. Next time-_

_The pain changes. She remembers this pain._

_Next time, she thinks, next time I'm not going to try to be like him. How could she, when he's looked her in the eye, seen everything she is, and rejected her? Twice? How pathetic is she for spending so much time trying to please him? Why should she bother?_

_Next time, she thinks, I'm-_


	7. Part 1, Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is also going on at FFN, and over there I got a few questions that I promised to answer in the notes for this chapter. Since they're such good questions, I'm posting them over here as well. I'm so glad people asked questions, it's really helping me understand more about how this whole 'writing stuff' thing works, which is exactly why I started this story in the first place.
> 
> BTW, if I don't answer a particular question, it's because you're asking the right question. I can't answer certain questions. Spoilers. :)
> 
> Question 1: I was hoping I'd get this question. Essentially, what happened is a sort of cosmic branching-off point, where the story sort of goes in two ways based on whether or not Jenny turned around to look at the rock a second time. Remember she saw the funny hand, then she went to leave the room. If she did turn around, she'd have seen that the hand had disappeared. If she didn't turn around, she wouldn't have seen the hand disappear. The first (or main) timeline the story's going to follow is the one where she doesn't turn around. The italic bits follow the timeline where she does turn around. You won't see much of it, but pay attention when you do.
> 
> Question 2: Yes, everyone is on Earth. Birmingham, England, around 2005 to be exact. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory initially weren't, but now they are.
> 
> Clues that won't make any sense until much later: in my version of Doctor Who, the success of a time lord's regeneration is not guaranteed. There can be mistakes. Also, your emotional state at the time of your regeneration can reflect on your new body's state of mind. For instance, say you're a Time Lord whose last action before regenerating was to really get excited because you stole something cool. Your next body might have a bit of a problem with kleptomania. Just so you know. Keep that in your head.
> 
> Ok. Story time.

 

 

They were in a small dusty sort of office, currently occupied by the constable on duty. Five minutes earlier, the Doctor and Rory blithely walked into the constable's office. The constable, for his part, reacted to the sudden intrusion with by briefly glancing at them above his newspaper, then leaning back in his chair and taking a long slow sip of coffee. The sip itself took approximately thirty-five seconds. It was the most confusing thirty-five seconds of Rory's life.

Amy, who had been delayed outside by a pebble in her shoe, then burst into the office, destroying the carefully cultivated air of confusion and awkwardness. The Doctor then remembered what he had initially decided to do, and asked the constable for information on Jennifer Smith.

"Hello," the Doctor greeted the constable. "We're looking for information on a missing persons case. Happened just a week ago. Jennifer Smith. That's her name. The missing person. Got any? Information, I mean."

The constable looked up from his paper again, surveyed the Doctor, and then returned to his paper. "No," he stated.

Clearing his throat, the Doctor flashed his psychic paper. The constable looked up, and reading the paper, quickly sat up straight in his chair and quickly apologized for his previous behaviour. It was blindingly obvious to Rory that this was a nearly transparent lie.

"So, you're from Scotland Yard, then? I suppose I can let you have a look at the file." The constable rose from his chair and trudged over to the filing cabinet.

The Doctor winked at Rory. He was so sure this wouldn't work. Rory scowled in response. Amy rolled her eyes at the two of them and went to inspect a nearby plant.

From beside the filing cabinet, the constable muttered, "S...Smith...Smith...sorry, I can't seem to find her file."

Rory's mind immediately filled with vaguely rude words. The Doctor's only outward reaction was a slight smile. Amy, for her part, gave no indication that she had heard the constable, being otherwise concerned with a nearby potted ficus.

"It's probably around here somewhere, I remember looking at it earlier this week," the constable continued, trying to make it seem as though he had full intentions of continuing to look for the case file.

Amy held up a manila folder. "This it?"

The constable's red face brightened slightly. "Yeah, that's it. Bring it over here, love."

Amy bristled at the pet name, but silently handed the file to the constable, who handed it to the Doctor.

"Right, then. Let's see what's in here, shall we?" The Doctor placed the file on the desk for the benefit of Amy and Rory, who were peering at the file's contents over his shoulder.

The constable cleared his throat. "Er, I'm afraid I can't let you two look at the file," he said, looking pointedly at Amy and then Rory.

The Doctor quickly stepped in. "They're with me. It's all right, Constable."

"Have they got identification?" The constable frowned. Rory poked the Doctor with his elbow, trying to get him to show the constable the psychic paper again. The Doctor didn't understand. Or perhaps he ignored him.

Either way, what happened next was either entirely Rory's or the Doctor's fault. Depending on who you asked.

First, the Doctor said to the constable, "No, they haven't got any identification."

Then Rory, frustrated by the Doctor's apparent inability to think on his feet, slipped his hand into the Doctor's pocket, looking for the psychic paper.

Next, he yelped as something in the Doctor's pocket bit him, bringing attention to the fact that his hand was in the Doctor's pocket.

"What the hell have you got in your pockets?" Rory exclaimed.

The Doctor fixed him with a look. "And why have you got your hand in my pocket?"

"I was looking for the...the thing," Rory replied lamely, not wanting to say the words 'psychic paper' in front of the constable.

"You could have just asked," the Doctor said. "It's rude to stick your hand in other people's pockets without asking."

Rory then looked over at his wife, who appeared to be unable to stop rolling her eyes. Something about the Doctor's willful ignorance combined with the look Amy was currently giving him brought him dangerously close to the point of incoherent indignation. "Right, then, next time I'll ask," he managed to say.

After that, the constable stood up and began saying something about how 'that sort of thing wasn't going to happen in his office'. In his defence, he would have gone on to say that 'he wasn't against that sort of thing in principle, in fact his ex-wife's nephew was one of that lot and he was a lovely fellow'.

Luckily he never got that far, because Amy had grabbed Rory's arm, and apologizing, dragged him out of the constable's office and into the main waiting room.

Approximately fifteen minutes later, Amy and Rory were waiting for the Doctor. In a police station. Amy leaned against a desk, picking at her nail polish and glaring at the door through which the Doctor had disappeared twenty minutes earlier with the officer on duty.

Rory peered into a nearby cell, and jumped when a somewhat conscious man opened his eyes and blinked wearily at him.

"Haven't seen the inside of one of these in ages," He remarked offhandedly, as the man in the cell wandered over to the toilet and sat down on the lid.

That statement briefly shook Amy out of her train of thought, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

"What?" It's not like she wasn't there.

If Rory had lacked a sense of self-preservation, he would have called the look on Amy's face a pout. As it was, he was hard-pressed to come up with anything else to call it.

"We're not doing anything," she pouted.

At that moment, almost as if it had been scripted, or as if he had been listening at the door, the Doctor burst out of the office. "Yes, we are."

"I thought we were going to figure out what happened," Amy said, only slightly petulantly.

With a blithe wave of his hand, he responded. "We are. We're investigating. We're investigators."

"We're at a police station," Amy helpfully pointed out, as the Doctor scanned the man in the cell with his screwdriver.

"So?"

"So, why are we not at the scene of the crime?" Amy hissed, in an obvious attempt to avoid being overheard. It was mostly successful, if only for the fact that the only person who could have theoretically heard her was currently passed out on a toilet inside a jail cell.

"We're interviewing. We're interviewers." He then grabbed a pad of paper and pen from the constable's desk and scribbled something that looked like 'funky rock thing'.

Rory looked over his shoulder. "Puffy rod thing? What puffy rod thing?"

"Funky rock thing. Much different. Also, I found another thing. Evidently, no one remembers what happened. They've all got different stories; most don't even remember anything. But, BUT. They all remember her," the Doctor said, poking the pad of paper with a satisfyingly solid 'plonk' where he had written the name 'Jennifer Smith'. "And they all say she saved their lives."

"So, what do you think, Doctor?" Amy asked.

"What do I think? This is your investigation. You're the sleuth," he told Amy, as he glided out the front door of the police station.

"I'm the sleuth?"

"Amelia Pond, time-traveling sleuth," the Doctor called over his shoulder.

"Actually, it's Williams now." Rory stated, mildly put out. As he walked alongside Amy as they left the police station, he experienced a sudden fit of premonitory dread. He could see the rest of his life. He saw himself, Rory Pond, the time-traveling sleuth's husband, constantly correcting people on his and Amy's names. Damn it.


	8. Part 1, Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here it is. The part you've all been waiting for. I'm doing the final edits on this chapter from deep inside the frozen hellscape that is my home town. Seriously. It's -21 here, which is -5F for you damn yanks. Unreasonably cold. Unnecessarily cold. Plus side, I've spent the morning throwing cups of tap water out my window and watching it freeze in the air. Super fun. Now I've got a space heater, Belle and Sebastian playing on my stereo, and a few hours of free time in which to write, which translates to more story for you! Yay!

Jenny's spent the last thirty minutes doing a cursory scan of all the exhibits in the museum. Nothing. She's even poked her head into every men's toilet she's come across. There's nothing out of place, no strange noises, nothing to suggest that a seven year old boy has managed to get himself locked in overnight.

Except that one thing. That strange rock.

She's not about to discount her instincts, bizarre though they may seem. Those little impulses she can't explain have never steered her in the wrong direction. With that in mind, she makes her way back to the ancient weapons exhibit.

* * *

 

There are certain times in your life when you can't help but evaluate the choices you've made. For most people, it's prompted by the inside of a jail cell, or a set of divorce papers, or the birds' eye view of the check-out line as it spirals around the side of the store because you forgot how to check for counterfeit notes. At times like that, a little part of your brain detaches itself from the situation at hand, shakes its head, and mutters _'Well, this is lovely. How the hell did it all get this way?'_

For the Doctor, it happened while standing in a darkened museum, scanning a large boulder out of sheer annoyance. There was no real reason to scan the boulder. It was a boulder. The only reason he was doing it was because he was currently refusing to help Amy. Amy, who had manipulated him like the gullible idiot he was. Amy, who had managed to henpeck him like an old housewife despite the fact she was happily married to another man.

He scans the boulder over and over again, not even bothering to read the results. He knows what they'll say. Scan the inside? Boulder. Scan the outside? Boulder. Scan around the boulder? Near a boulder. Fascinating stuff.

Not too long ago, he had been happily doing something interesting. Then the two of them ganged up on him and demanded an adventure. Now, he's not one to deny anyone an adventure; he soaks up adrenaline like most humanoids soak up caffeine. But letting them choose the adventure? Unthinkable.

But then she pouted at him, and he set the TARDIS to this crumbly old museum, where he now stood scanning a boulder. She was off with Rory having adventures. At least he was still sticking to his principles. Somewhat.

Around the time of his twentieth scan of the boulder, the Doctor notices something odd. He feels a small prickling on the back of his neck. It's a particular type of prickle. There's the dalek-in-the-room prickle of terror. There's the everyone's-a-bit-put-off-by-his-alienish-behavior prickle. He generally ignores that one. There's the no-blinking-because-there's-a-Weeping-Angel-over-there prickle. That one always gets him in the eyes.

This is almost certainly either the need-new-dandruff-shampoo prickle or the someone's-watching-you prickle. He's willing to bet on the second one. That being said, his immeasurably superior Time Lord senses haven't picked up on anyone else in the room. Whoever is watching him is either extraordinarily stealthy or not actually in the room with him.

When the Doctor scans the boulder for the twenty-first time, he takes a second to look for the security cameras. By some amazingly bizarre stroke of luck, he managed to place himself in the one place in the room that is completely invisible to the cameras. He didn't plan it, but if in future Amy or Rory happened to ask, of course he did.

That, of course, means that someone is watching him. Someone he can't see.

He then takes a minute to curse Amy's talent for sniffing out mysteries.

A small face peeks around the side of the boulder. "Hi," it says.

The Doctor smiles at the face. As far as extraordinarily stealthy peeping toms go, this is a rather innocuous one. "Well, hello there," he replies, and he shifts his attention back to the boulder, as though he was doing something vitally important.

The owner of said small face steps around the side of the boulder to reveal a small female body, dwarfed by a large purple anorak over a light jumper and a long dark braid that swings wildly as she moves.

"You do know you're not supposed to be in the museum after it closes?" he asks her as she walks around the side of the boulder(silently) to stand beside him.

She's scrutinizing him, taking in his every detail, her wide eyes set in an astonishingly intense expression. After a second, she obviously comes to some sort of conclusion. Her eyes flash merrily, and the corner of her mouth ticks upward in a wry grin. "I know. And why are you here?"

He can't help but smile back at her, despite his generally terrible mood. Her delight at having caught him in a hypocritical statement is almost palpable, but in an innocently cheeky way. "Touché," he responds.

The girl's head tilts, regarding him in a seemingly relaxed manner. When he meets her eyes, he sees the question there, though. He quickly weighs the idea of telling her information, but before he can come to a conclusive decision to trust or not to trust her, she's already started talking.

"I'm here to pick up a kid. My friend's kid. He was here on a class trip. But he wasn't there. So I hung around."

That wasn't anything the Doctor didn't already know. But the logic behind her decision doesn't make sense. Unless you knew something was wrong.

Her delight quickly fades as she regards the boulder. She likes it as little as he does. He impulsively reaches out to stroke the boulder's smooth surface. He's always liked quartz. Nice reliable mineral, that.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she says abruptly, just as he's about to touch the surface.

"Why?"

She eyes the boulder, his outstretched arm. "Don't know. Just got a hunch."

That, of course, sets off the Doctor's mental alarms. Nine hundred and seven years has taught him that no sentient being ever actually experiences anything remotely close to a 'hunch'. Hunches are how people tell other people they know something that they shouldn't. Anyone with a hunch is automatically under suspicion. Anyone under suspicion generally is an alien out to destroy or enslave the earth. Obviously.

With that in mind, he scans the boulder. That makes twenty-two. He's tempted to scan the girl, but that'd make her suspicious. He's already suspicious of her, and if he made her suspicious of him, that would be bad. After a brief reflection, he also makes a mental note to not use the word 'suspicious' for two days. He's used up his allotment.

"What are you doing?" she asks instantly, exactly like he assumed she would.

"Scanning," he responds succinctly. Despite his common sense telling him otherwise, he's a bit wary of simply writing her off as 'someone involved in whatever's going on'.

"Oh." She thinks on that briefly, furrowing her brow in a gravely serious fashion. "How?"

He raises an eyebrow at her question. In his mind, there's a very fine line between curiosity and nosiness. The Doctor's always prided himself on managing to stay well on the 'curiosity' side of the line, by virtue of being able to constantly alter the line's location.

"It's sonic."

"Oh," she says lamely, in the tone of voice that suggests that his reply did nothing to answer her question.

He tries to ignore her eyes, because he knows his weakness for explanatory speeches. If he looks at her, he'll find himself explaining the general principles behind psycho-physical manipulation via l-waves, and that's at least three hundred years in her future. Luckily, her attention's managed to fix itself on another part of his screwdriver.

"Where's the read-out bit? I see the scan-y bit, but how do you get readings from it? Is there a screen? It must be really small. How do you see the screen?" She blurts it all out in a single breath, as if she simply can't hold back the questions. The Doctor's head spins slightly, and he's momentarily reminded of his teachers at the academy scolding him for using his respiratory bypass when asking questions in class.

There's a brief pause while he manages to get his thoughts back together, and he turns to see her watching him expectantly.

He turns to the rock and scans it again. For the first time, he actually looks at the results.

"This is strange," he murmured to his sonic screwdriver.

"What's strange?"

"The reading."

"How's it strange?" she asks, her brow re-furrowing itself.

"It's organic."


	9. Part 1, Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how sometimes you forget to bring a book back to the library? For a long time? Like, a really long time? And then you remember about the book, and you grab it off your desk and put it in the front seat of your car, because even though you're too busy to go to the library right now, you know that you'll definitely do it later leave it in the front seat so it's there to remind you? And then it sits in the front seat of the car for a while, and then it kind of fades into the scenery, so you forget to bring it back even longer. And eventually you're so overcome with shame that you end up sitting in the parking lot of the library, trying to tell yourself to just go in the damn library and drop off the book.
> 
> This chapter is that book.

 

The girl tilts her head at the Doctor. "Organic, like double the price at the grocer's, or organic like made up of organic compounds organic?"

The Doctor is momentarily puzzled about her first use of the word 'organic'. "The second one."

"But it's a rock." Her eyebrow raises itself of its own accord.

"I know," he says to her, his excitement growing. Amy knows him far too well, but she could never have predicted this. "Strange, isn't it?"

"Petrified wood, perhaps?"

"Petrified. Turned to stone. So no. This is alive. But wait." He squints and holds his sonic up in front of his face. "Oh. This is really strange," he murmurs. A slightly manic grin appears on his face. "You know how I said it was organic?"

"Yeah."

"It is. But only on the inside."

She crosses her arms. "How'd you mean?"

"I mean," he says excitedly, "that it's only organic on the inside. The outside's stone."

"So...there's something inside?"

"Good thinking, but not quite." He looks at her jumper. "What's that made of?"

"What? I don't know."

"Got any frayed edges? Any loose strands?" he asks, pointing at her sleeve. She replies with a look.

The Doctor rolls his eyes and bounds over to a small glass case. Inside the case is a feathered head-dress. She catches up to him, and the two of them stand over the glass case, staring at the head-dress. He winks at her, and shatters the case with his sonic screwdriver. Suddenly he's running back to the boulder with the head-dress on.

At this point, he's honestly surprised the girl hasn't started yelling at him. Instead, she's staring at him in bemusement, obviously struck dumb. He reaches up and plucks a feather off the head-dress. No speeches about vandalism. Funny, that. He expected her to be a shouter. He steps to the boulder, and lightly brushes its surface with the feather. The feather disappears from his hand as it's sucked inside the rock.

"See? Organic." He fishes through his pocket, eventually finding an Irish sixpence piece. He throws it at the rock, and it bounces off and clatters on the floor by the girl's feet. She picks it up and studies it.

"Not organic. Nickel, in fact," he tells her as she flips it over in her hand.

Sixpence still in hand, she nods up at the feathered head-dress on the Doctor's head.

"What do you reckon the rest of that's made of?"

He takes it off his head and regards it. "Oh, leather, I imagine. Why?"

She smiles at him, grabs the head-dress out of his hands, and throws it at the rock. His mouth drops open, and he squeaks at her impertinence.

The head-dress sticks to the rock, as if glued in place, and then there's an audible sucking sound as it disappears inside the rock.

They share a look. Apparently this situation has grown exponentially more interesting. The girl's eyebrow crooks up, and a grin slowly grows on her face. The side of the Doctor's mouth tilts up of its own volition.

Oh, he likes her.

Now she's looking down at his hand, which currently is holding the screwdriver. She nods at the rock, silently asking him a question.

In response he twists a dial on the screwdriver, increasing the power. He then scans the entire boulder, walking around the side and back again in an attempt to get a more accurate result.

The girl silently watches as the Doctor scans the boulder for the twenty-sixth time. When the end of the screwdriver lights up, her eyes widen. She cocks her head, which is obviously filled with questions, and asks, "Why's it green?"

"The rock?" The Doctor asks, slightly confused.

She points at the tip of the screwdriver. "No," she says, "The scan-y bit. Why's it green? I mean, as opposed to any other colour. Does it make a difference?"

He stops scanning. That's actually a pretty good question. He holds the screwdriver in front of him and regards it, thinking about his answer. "No, I suppose not," he says thoughtfully. "I've had other colours. Last one was blue. Before that it was red. They all worked the same way."

"Ah." She nods her head.

His mind quickly flits back to the boulder, and he steps back from it, all the while musing. There's something strange about this rock. Not only is it apparently organic which, mind you, makes no sense, it's also smooth. Impossibly smooth. Like it's been polished. One thing about archeology museums is that they tend to not polish the artifacts. And why is this in an archaeology museum? It's a rock. And-

His mouth opens slightly, and the contents of his inner monologue come spilling out, almost as if someone had redirected the flow of a stream of water.

"-that's not the only strange thing about this rock. It's like-"

"Like you have to touch it," the girl murmurs. He's momentarily taken aback. It's not often someone finishes his inner monologues. He looks over at the girl, and she's regarding the rock with her eyebrows furrowed together and her head sideways. He's known her all of five minutes, but already he knows that's her thinking face. He's not usually this perceptive. Maybe it's that her face is just that open. He looks down and sees her hand stretched out toward the rock.

"Don't," he says sharply, much sharper than he's used to in this body. Her hand instantly drops down to her side, and she stands up straight and looks directly at him in one strangely swift motion, like it's a conditioned reflex.

When she sees his reaction, she instantly relaxes and smiles slightly. "Thanks for that," she says.

"Of course," he replies, with all the stiff British deference he can muster. The two of them stand in a brief relieved silence that only a brush with danger can create.

He realizes he's most likely just saved this girl's life, and that she's probably not leaving his side until this business with the hostages and the funky rock thing is through. He doesn't even know her name. Of course, he assumes this is the Jennifer Smith from the television at the pub, but there's no way to be certain. Besides, the fact that one knows someone else's name before they've introduced themselves is a fact that one should generally avoid divulging. That was a lesson that took him a rather long time to learn.

"I'm the Doctor, by the way," he says conversationally. "Should have mentioned that earlier."

The girl stiffens.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for next week, when Amy and Rory bicker and plot-ish things happen!


	10. Part 1, Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, the bit where Jenny and the Doctor are talking was written well before anyone knew Peter Capaldi would be the 12th Doctor. I personally think the Scottish joke is funnier in retrospect. And weirdly prescient.

Rory was currently looking around the darkened museum exhibit, which, of course, was filled with back-lit reconstructions of palaeolithic skeletons. "I know we've been in far more dangerous places, but for some reason, this place gives me the creeps." Saying things gave him the creeps was a sure way of relieving some of the tension that was currently building up somewhere in his fear gland. Being a nurse, he knew there was no such thing as a fear gland, but he reckoned that if there was, his would be completely filled with dread.

"It's just because it's night," the Doctor told him, obviously trying to be helpful. "Pretend we're on a planet where night is day and day is night, that'll do it."

"What?" Rory wasn't sure if he simply misunderstood the Doctor, or if he had genuinely heard that spectacularly stupid statement.

Amy clapped her hands together. "So. We're going to look for the hostages?"

"No," the Doctor answered. " _You're_ going to look for the hostages. I didn't want to go here. I'm just the one who brought you here. I'm your cabby. Call me the cabby. No, don't call me the cabby. Call me the Doctor."

For a hostage situation, Amy thought, there were far too few hostages. Not that she was an expert on hostage situations. She didn't even consider herself an amateur hostage situation enthusiast. If that even was a thing. Amy kind of hoped it wasn't.

It wasn't like she was expecting the TARDIS to simply land in a room full of hostages, but she had kind of been hoping they'd all be in the next room. Or the next. Or in the museum at all. Maybe the Doctor got the date wrong. She mentioned the idea to the Doctor, who scoffed in reply.

"Of course I didn't," he replied, as though the very idea was abhorrent.

"Are you sure this is the right museum, then?"

He whirled around and glowered at Amy. He opened his mouth to say something about her lack of faith in his driving skills.

Amy, seeing his look, continued, "It's not that I don't have faith in your driving skills-" Rory couldn't help but smirk at that, "-it's that there aren't any hostages here. At all."

"Not in this room, no. You can't find anything by staying in one place," the Doctor said, "which is something I'd assumed you already knew."

Amy scowled. "You're a bit on edge today, aren't you?"

She walked over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Listen, Doctor, I know you don't want to do this. We won't take long."

The Doctor valiantly tried to keep glowering, but he failed in the face of Amy's affectionate smile. The corners of his mouth quirked upwards.

"I still don't think this is a good idea," he said. Rory had never agreed with the Doctor more.

The last thing Amy wanted to do was turn her back on an adventure, but she had to know something first. "If you think it's going to be dangerous, tell me," she said seriously.

"It's a hostage situation, of course it's going to be dangerous," Rory said.

Amy amended her statement. "More dangerous than normal, I mean."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her. "If I say 'yes', will you get back in the TARDIS so we can go somewhere else?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

There was silence for a moment, and the Doctor shrugged. He smiled ruefully. "Go and save the world, Amelia Pond. I'll be here waiting for you."

Amy and Rory stared at him, surprised at his sudden reversal of opinion.

"Go on, go save lives. Shoo," he said, waving his hands at them.

Amy shot one last curious look at the Doctor before leaving the room. Before Rory left the room, the Doctor called his name.

"Rory."

Rory stopped and turned to look at the Doctor.

"Make sure she doesn't do anything stupid."

Rory smiled. "I always do."

 

* * *

 

 

And you are?"

Staring at the rock, she answers slowly. "Jenny. I'm Jenny."

He smiles reassuringly at her, but she doesn't look at him like he had expected; rather she begins blinking furiously at the boulder.

"I'm Jenny," she repeats, quieter this time.

The Doctor doesn't notice her expression as he views the results of the scan he'd just run. He's momentarily pleased with having solved a mystery, but that joy is short-lived as he realizes the repercussions of his discovery.

"Er," he says to the girl, Jenny, she calls herself.

She turns to him, but doesn't meet his eyes, apparently being content to make eye contact with his shoes. He waits politely for her to say something, but she appears to have something in her eye and is not saying anything, so he takes the initiative.

"I think I've found all those kids," he tells her, pointing at the rock.

Jenny continues to look at his shoes.

"They're in the rock."

No response. Honestly, it's like he's not even saying anything.

"Sucked in," he continues, "like that head-dress." He then makes a slurping noise and illustrates it for her.

Jenny begins to say something, but it comes out as a small croaking noise.

"Excuse me?"

"There's nothing," she says, with a raw sort of bitterness. "absolutely nothing. Tell me..."

At this, she coughs back a sob. "Tell me you looked," she blurts, the words rushing out almost of their own volition. "Tell me you thought about me. I don't care if it's a lie, just tell me you-"

"I'm sorry, but I've never-"

"Give me your hand!"

Wordlessly, he holds out his left hand. She places it on her heart. He finds his gaze somehow captured by the sight of her bright green eyes, locked onto his like they're a lifeline. And then she moves his hand to the other side of her chest.

"You're...you're-," and he grabs hold of her, briefly lifting her up off her feet. She's clutching his shoulders, and he's wrapped his arms around her tight enough to ensure that nothing could pry her from him. He can't believe the universe let this happen to him. She's sobbing into his chest, apologizing over and over again, and with a rush of paternal instincts he'd thought long forgotten, he clumsily kisses the top of her head and murmurs comforting words. He doesn't know what she's sorry for, but whatever it is, he knows that there was really never anything to forgive.

After he's sure her heaving sobs have ceased, he grabs her shoulders and looks her over.

"You've regenerated."

She gives him a slightly nonplussed look, the effect of which is ruined when she wipes her nose.

"Changed your face," he explains.

She knows, and her expression makes that perfectly clear, but the Doctor's too busy marvelling at her existence to notice. He grins as he stares at her nose. "You look like me!"

"I do?"

"Not this me. A bit like last me, and a bit like the me, oh, three mes before that. Three? Yeah, three. The Scottish one."

The idea of looking like him, and his obvious joy at seeing her again, makes her face light up. "You were Scottish? How can you be Scottish?"

"No idea. I just was. Don't tell Amy."

Just as Jenny opens her mouth to ask him about Amy, he goes on. "Of course, last you looked like me too. But those were different mes."

"Were those Scottish?" she asks, which makes him laugh, a deep belly laugh.

"Nah." He picks her up again and whirls her around. "Ha! You've been going by 'Smith', too!"

"How'd you know?"

"I came here looking for you! I didn't know it was you; in fact the thought didn't even cross my mind. But it's you!"

"You didn't know it was me?"

"Nope," he replies, entirely missing the edge in her voice.

Her face seems to draw in on itself. "Did you look for me?" she asks quietly.

The Doctor's glee vanishes. He leans forward and grabs her shoulders, looking intently into her eyes. "I didn't know you were alive."

Her face falls, a mask of confusion and hurt. She stares at him, scrutinizing him so closely he could almost swear she was able to read his mind. Her head then tilts to the side and back up again as she quickly figures something out. She grins slightly. "Oh...oh, I see. You haven't-"

"Haven't what?"

"Nothing," she says as her slight grin widens to a full-on enigmatic smile. The Doctor can't help but feel a rush of pride. For Time Lords, a child's first enigmatic statement is considered a major developmental milestone, along with a child's first steps or first words. Then again, she knows something he doesn't. Bit of a double-edged sword.

The Doctor and Jenny share a look as they hear a distant crash. They run towards it.


	11. Part 1, Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right. So. My brain has been invaded by this idea for a Doctor/OC story. It's equal parts intense UST, things blowing up, and high stakes poker games. Oh, and musings on the nature of reality. The damn story won't leave my head. It's eating my brain. It's holding this story hostage. I'm not even going to write a single word of it, though, until I finish posting Part 1 of this story. This story's currently standing at around five full-length parts (~15-20k words each) with four smaller (2-3k words) pieces in between the big parts. So we're talking roughly 80-110k words in all, 40k of which are written. On that note, here's your semi-regular fix of story. As always, thank you so f-ing much for reading my story. I mean that. :)

Amy grinned at Rory as he held the door for her. "How gallant of you," she remarked. She stood waiting for him in the small vestibule that led to the main part of a large and noticeably empty atrium. Most of the room was softly illuminated by the city lights shining through the elaborate glass ceiling.

"I just didn't want to be the first one through." Rory replied. He was only partially kidding.

Amy rolled her eyes. " _And_ the romance is dead," she joked.

Rory let out a soft snort, and the two of them peered out into the room. Empty.

"They've got to be around here somewhere," Amy says to Rory, shining her torch into the corners of the room, which only managed to cast bizarre-looking shadows against the walls. Rory began to feel the beginnings of a good old fashioned case of the heebie-jeebies coming on.

"Yeah. What then? It's not like we can defend ourselves."

She scoffs. "You're so sure we're going to be attacked."

"Um, yeah, yeah I am," Rory stated. "Amy, we're walking _directly_ into a hostage situation. A hostage situation in which someone died. Let's just go find the Doctor."

"We're not looking for the hostages."

"No?"

"We're looking for Jennifer Smith."

Then he figures out what Amy's motive actually is. She wants to save this girl's life. It's a noble move, and he can't help but admire his wife, but at the same time, every science-fiction movie Rory's ever seen is telling him that this is a spectacularly bad idea. "I'm not really sure about this plan," he says.

Another thought strikes him. "Wasn't Jennifer Smith the one who saved the hostages?"

Amy doesn't respond immediately. She just takes a few steps to the left and shines her torch into another corner of the room.

Rory continues. "So what exactly _is_ your plan? Grab Jennifer Smith and run? What about the hostages?"

It's times like this when Rory wishes he could grab Amy and shake her. He knows she's probably going be angry with his question, but seriously, someone's got to think these things through.

Like he expected, Amy whirls around, eyes blazing. "What do you think? Of course we're going to help the hostages."

Rory crosses his arms. "How?"

He's sure that on some level, Amy's aware of what he's doing, but that doesn't make him any less frustrated with her decision-making process. Or rather, the lack thereof. He's half decided to just leave her to it, to head back to the TARDIS, but he knows that she'd almost definitely go on looking for Jennifer Smith anyway. And if she found the hostages...

He sighs, turns around to see his wife with her hand on her hip, clearly indignant but also clearly thinking.

"My plan, Rory," she says, with not a small amount of annoyance, "is to find Jennifer Smith as quickly as possible, help her do whatever she did to free the hostages, and keep her alive. Not impossible, just difficult."

In fairness, it's about as concrete a plan as any they normally have. Of course, the Doctor's generally involved, and he's a walking statistical anomaly, so they never really _need_ a plan. When you're around the Doctor, things just tend to work that way. Everything happens at the exact moment you need it to happen. Maybe it's a Time Lord thing.

Amy, thinking aloud, says slowly, "But what if she's _with_ the hostages? How will we get her out? How will we keep the hostage people from noticing us? What if they have guns or something. That's pretty likely, considering they're taking people hostage..."

She trails off, realizing exactly what she had just said. At seeing her fallen expression, Rory has a momentary desire to erase the last few minutes, to keep that look off her face.

Amy switches off her torch. "Why don't we just go find the Doctor?"

"You sure?"

She sighs. "Yeah, I'm sure. You're right."

Rory pulls an exaggeratedly shocked expression. "Wait, hold on, can you repeat that? I need to record this," he says, fishing for his phone in his pocket.

Amy cracks a smile in response, which was, of course, the entire point. As they approach the door they entered the room in, she rushes ahead and holds the door open for him.

"How gallant of you," Rory says.

"Hmm. And you said the romance is dead," she replies.

"No I didn't. You did-"

Amy would have undoubtedly had something to say about that, had there not been a loud shattering crash behind them. Something the size of an articulated lorry was falling through the glass ceiling, sending shattering glass around the room. Rory dives to the floor, grabbing for Amy's arm, which is wholly unnecessary, seeing as how she's already crouched down, covering her face with her hands.

After all the glass falls to the floor, they lower their hands and take a look at the scene. The thing that crashed through the ceiling is almost definitely alive. Maybe. It definitely was alive at some point.

Rory's about to ask Amy if she's alright when the animal makes a keening noise. It's alive, and clearly in pain. It shifts a limb and makes a pained sound that bores through Rory's heart.

On the far side of the room, a door opens. The Doctor races in, holding tightly to the door's handle as he nearly loses his balance on the glass shards underfoot. He stops to recover his balance and someone slams in into his back.

Doctor!" Amy screams as he comes into view. He runs to her, clasping the hand of the girl who slammed into him, and the three of them watch the large animal as it writhes on the floor, glass shards scraping loudly against the marble floor as it moves. On the other side of the room, Rory slowly stands up and brushes the glass off his jeans.

"Everyone OK?" the Doctor asks.

"Fine," Amy replies, checking her hands for cuts.

"We're all fine. Well, except for that thing," Rory answered. He gestures to the large animal in the centre of the room. They all stop to look at the strange animal.

It's a bit smaller than an articulated lorry, more like the size of a minivan. Its pale loose skin reminds Amy of an albino lizard she had seen once, but that's where the reptilian similarity ends. It's clearly a mammal of some sort, albeit a giant yellowish hairless flying mammal from space. It stretches out a leg in an attempt to get back up, and she notices the claws. The animal stretches out its bat-like wings, making it seem much bigger, and Amy reasoned that it must have been using its wings as a parachute as it fell.

The Doctor walks slowly over to it, girl in tow, and reaches out a hand to kindly pat its snout. It snarls. The girl shrieks. He takes that as an invitation to get her well outside of biting distance.

The animal manages to regain its footing, and lifts its nose and sniffs, making oddly canine snuffling noises. It obviously finds something interesting, because it abruptly begins walking unsteadily through the rubble, in the direction of the door. Rory bounds over to pull Amy out of the way, as she's standing directly in front of the door. The animal smashes through the door.

"Where's it going?" Amy asks, as it gallops away.

The Doctor grimaces. "I don't know," he replies, "but I do know it's going in the direction of the TARDIS."

With that, he dashes off, still pulling the girl along behind him.

\-----------------

The four of them stand in the room with the boulder. Rory reaches out to touch it.

"Don't touch it!" The Doctor shouts. The girl beside him points with her free hand to a sign that states 'DO NOT TOUCH'.

The Doctor grins down at the girl. "Funny how I didn't notice that before."

The girl smiles at him. "Would you have cared?"

His grin grows even wider, threatening to overtake his entire face. The girl's grinning back at him. It's obvious that they're having a bit of a moment. Amy, at that moment, realizes something.

"You're Jennifer Smith," she states.

"She's Jenny," the Doctor corrects.

"I'm his-" Jenny began, but she was immediately cut off by the Doctor. 

"She's my daughter!" 

There's a brief pause while Amy boggles. "Your what?!"

"My daughter!"

"Yup," Jenny adds, swaying slightly with her hands in her pockets. The Doctor briefly marvels. It's a bit like looking at a tiny version of himself. A tiny female version of himself. A tiny female version of himself with a purple anorak. A tiny female version of himself with a purple anorak and a plait.

"Who's her mum?" Amy asks.

Jenny winks at her. "Don't have one."

Amy boggles. Again. 

Rory, on the other hand, is unsurprised. Disgusted, but unsurprised.

The giant hairless yellowish flying mammal from space then decides to amble over to the boulder and lift its leg.

"MOVE MOVE MOVE!" The Doctor yells. He's more freaked out than Amy or Rory have ever seen him. 

They immediately bound to the corner of the room, near the case of palaeolithic weapons. Amy gets there first, followed by Rory. The Doctor, with Jenny in tow, plows into them, forcing Amy and Rory against the wall. They cower there for a moment, watching the animal starts clawing at the boulder.

"Is he marking his territory?" Rory whispers. 

"No," the Doctor answers. "See how he's only clawing at the one spot? He's actually being quite careful."

"He wants the inside!" Jenny says. Amy shushes her.

"No, no, the inside's alive, it's organic, and it's all sucky! It sucks in organic material!" she continued excitedly. "It's hungry!"

"Again, Jenny, good thinking, but entirely wrong," the Doctor says. "Think about it. What else is hard on the outside and gushy on the inside?"

"Mollusks?"

"Jelly moulds?"

"Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop?"

The Doctor stares at them in amazement.

"Eggs!" He nearly shouts. "Eggs, an egg, it's an egg!"

"Oh," the three of them quietly chorus.

"Thought you knew that, Jenny, seeing as how you knew not to touch it in the first place," the Doctor noted.

"How could I know that? I knew that everyone was gone, and that the only thing new was that rock."

"You were sleuthing, weren't you?" he says to her, grinning.

"Why yes, yes I was."

"Good girl." Jenny beams.

The Doctor steps out from the corner, grabbing Jenny and pulling her along with him. "The thing is, I think I've figured out what type of egg it is."

"And?"

"It's unfertilized."

"So he's trying to-"

"Yes."

"And there's people inside."

"Yes."

Jenny's head tilts. "That's disgusting."

"Yes. Well, that's reproduction for you. Messy."

"But there's people in there!"

"That's the first stage. Dissolve the organic matter. Hence the clawing. He's going to inject the egg with acid."

Jenny's eyes widen. "We have to save them! When he gets the egg open, we can pull them out!"

He's silent.

"We have to save them!" She repeats.

He regards her for a few seconds. "Do we?"

Jenny looks up at him, shock evident on her face.

"All he wants to do is preserve his species. He doesn't want to hurt anyone. He easily could have killed us all earlier."

"But-"

"For all we know, he could be the last of his species."


	12. Part 1, Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I finished my BA, spent a couple months in the hospital, spent a few months recuperating at home, moved to another country(just the U.S., nothing exciting), and finally started a fancy-ass grad program. More recently, I just attended a huge family reunion and got the flu. Good times. 
> 
> How was your year?

"What's your plan then?"

The Doctor looks over at Jenny and winks. "Haven't got one. I never do."

This does not please her in the least. "Seriously? My friend's son is in there, and you haven't bothered to make a plan?"

"Don't worry," Amy says, patting Jenny's shoulder, "he'll figure something out. Eventually."

"I can't believe that," Jenny says. "No, I mean it. I actually don't believe that. You had to have had some sort of intention. Why else come here?"

Amy removes her hand from Jenny's shoulder. "Actually," she says, "I was the one who wanted to come here," she admits. "The Doctor didn't want to go. Sulked a bit, to be honest."

Jenny scowls. "So you don't have a plan," she said to the Doctor.

He tries not to grin. "Nope."

She whirls around to face Amy. "Have you got a plan, then?"

Amy pauses, taken aback. "I wanted to see what you did."

Jenny briefly looks over at Rory, who is steadfastly looking at the floor. She looks back to her father.

"Is this a test?" she asks him. He doesn't reply, so she continues. "Like, do I have to prove myself or something?"

The Doctor is vaguely horrified. "Of course not!" he cries. Amy shushes him.

"Cause I can, you know. I _can_ do it. I can prove it," she says, as though she's daring anyone to say otherwise.

Rory's first instinct is to tell Jenny that _of course she doesn't have to prove anything, we'll figure something out_ , when the Doctor crosses his arms and smirks. "Go on then. Prove it," he says to her.

She nods. Astonished at the Doctor's behaviour, Rory watches her closely. There's something in her eyes that's stubborn and eager and incredibly scared. He hopes the Doctor is lying about not having a plan, because if this _really_ is some sort of game he's playing with her, he'd damn well better make sure she gets through it alive.

Jenny takes a deep breath.

"Right then, can we not kill him and still manage to get the egg open?" she asks the Doctor. He's genuinely curious about what she did in the first place, and if she needs to 'prove herself to him' in order to motivate herself, he's happy to oblige.

The Doctor opens his mouth to reply, even though he doesn't have an answer ready. It's never stopped him before. As words begin to crystallize in his mind, he realizes she's not expecting a reply. Even though she's looking directly at him, she's somehow looking past him. He recognizes this look. This is one of _his_ looks. Interesting. He watches her with a new sense of scientific curiosity. He's never experienced it from the outside. To be honest, he finds it a bit disconcerting.

" _Can_ we even kill him?" she continues. He has to admit, he's really not pleased with her line of inquiry. She goes silent, distant and glassy eyes fixed on his, and the Doctor notes that he'd prefer she think aloud.

Several meters away the giant yellowish hairless mammal from space grunts loudly as he claws at the egg, and the scraping sound echoes around the room. Everyone's attention snaps back to the problem at hand, including Jenny.

Her mind appears to have cleared, the Doctor notices. He's less pleased when he sees the grin on her face. He's seen that look before, in a variety of situations, on a variety of faces. It usually precedes either theft or extensive property damage. He's not technically a fan of the latter (even as he recognizes the hypocrisy of that statement), but he's completely against the former. And he'll be damned, he thinks, if his daughter thinks she can do _either_ of those things.

The Doctor's raising his eyebrow, about to say something to that effect, but she ignores him to grin at the person who's closest to the entrance of their little alcove. Rory points at himself, and when she nods, he starts to protest.

Amy shushes him. "You're closest," she whispers loudly.

"Is there any possible way you could whisper louder?" the Doctor asks. Amy punches his upper arm.

"What do I do?" Rory asks Jenny, in an appropriately quiet whisper.

"Just go to the far wall," she responds. "Please," she adds. Without further ado, he slinks off, rubber-soled shoes cushioning the sound of his steps.

She nods at Amy. "You too," she says. Amy responds with a look.

"Doctor," Amy pleads, "tell me you've got a plan."

"Of course I haven't. She does. We're helping." He points at Jenny.

"Doctor..."

"Amelia..."

"Seriously. I mean it. Don't let the...the _thing_ happen." She gives him a meaningful look, which is totally unnecessary because he's been thinking about it almost nonstop since he met Jenny five minutes ago.

Frankly, he's a bit insulted that Amy would think he'd forget about it. Of course he'd remember that Jenny's supposed to _die_ sometime in the next several minutes. It is possible, he thinks, that she just regenerates. She's already been through at least one successful regeneration. He doesn't want to chance it, however. He's already seen her die enough times already. If time can be rewritten, he thinks, then he's going to do it right here. Right now.

Jenny's staring at the far wall containing the palaeolithic axes. To the Doctor she says, "Dad."

He smiles at that. Can't help it. "Hmm?"

"Think you can knock him out?"

"Rory?"

"No," she replies, somewhat taken aback, "the big bloke." She points to the giant yellowish hairless flying mammal, who appears to be having little success clawing a hole in the egg. Rory, who is still within earshot, makes sure to shoot his very best dirty look at the Doctor. Over Jenny's head, they briefly make eye contact, during which the Doctor smirks unapologetically.

Jenny continues. "I mean with the screwdriver. Like, at a certain frequency."

"That's a good question. I have no idea," he tells her. "Let's find out."

He raises the sonic screwdriver and aims it at the giant yellowish hairless flying mammal. He's fiddling with the screwdriver without pressing any buttons. The giant yellowish hairless flying mammal, who is apparently smarter than it looks, then notices that something is pointed at it. It briefly pauses in its clawing and slowly looks up at the Doctor and Jenny. They both hold their breath. Rory immediately freezes in mid-step, and Amy appears to be trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, which is next to impossible considering her hair colour and the fact she's wearing a yellow cardigan. Neither of them are exactly cowering, but they're both certainly on the way there. Then the Doctor presses the button. The screwdriver makes its distinctive whirring sound.

Instead of cracking the egg, like the Doctor had been expecting, the sonic screwdriver causes the display cases in the room to shatter. Rory yelps as he's showered with shards of glass for the second time this evening. Amy appears to have perfected the 'cover your face and drop to the ground' method of facial protection. Jenny and the Doctor, being on the other side of the room, are completely free from the glass.

As Rory's hoping the wetness on his forehead is from sweat and not blood, and Amy's shaking the glass out of her hair, the Doctor looks at Jenny.

"Not what I expected," he tells her. She nods. And then she notices it.

"Think we can work with that?" He asks her.

She's grinning. "Definitely."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're nearing the end of part 1. Exciting, no? Does it feel like it's wrapping up?


	13. Part 1, Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one ever told me how much fun it is to write the Doctor getting mad.

"Ready?" Jenny asks. Looking around, it's a bit obvious that they're all ready. She just really wanted to say it.

"Here, boy!" Rory yells. The Doctor, standing beside him, waves his arm around and does a little jig. The giant yellowish hairless flying mammal stops clawing at the egg and looks at him. Snuffles.

"Hey you! I'm talking to you, you...big space...thing! We're going to take your egg away from you! Yeah, that's right, your egg." It takes a lumbering step toward them and begins to snarl. It may not be able to speak, but it apparently is able to understand tone.

WHAM. THUD.

Amy's standing behind the unconscious giant yellowish hairless flying mammal, neolithic axe in hand, every inch the victor.

Jenny frowns. "That was surprisingly easy."

"Probably hasn't got a thick cranium. Bloke that big, probably doesn't need to avoid getting hit in the head," the Doctor replied. He walked over to it and briefly scanned its cranial bone density. The results were not what he expected. "Low bone density. Like I thought."

Amy is briefly annoyed by that remark, but really, she just knocked out an animal the size of a minivan with a neolithic axe, so she's not actually offended. What she really wants to do is lift the axe over her head and roar. She doesn't want to wake up the big bloke, though, and she can't lift the axe that high, so she settles for lifting the axe to her waist and mouthing 'oh my god' to Rory, who's probably about as impressed and terrified of her as he's ever going to be.

Jenny's eyeing the egg. "Everyone got an axe?"

Everyone present, save the giant yellowish hairless flying mammal, is currently holding a priceless ancient battle axe. They're kind of hard to miss, what with being huge and metal. Amy and Rory share a look. And then start hitting the egg. Jenny quickly follows suit, whacking the egg as hard as she can, grunting as the impact of the axe on the eggshell sends shock-waves up her arms. The Doctor, after briefly considering the egg's dimensions, strikes the egg directly in the middle, exactly where the giant yellowish hairless flying mammal had been clawing.

Amy, who's relying on centrifugal force to guide her blow, misses the egg entirely. The priceless neolithic battle axe strikes the floor instead, cracking the stone blade neatly in two. Rory and the Doctor stop hitting the egg for a moment to look at Amy, crestfallen as she stares at her handiwork. Jenny's about to tell her to get another axe when Amy drops the remains of the broken axe and sprints over to the display. She quickly grabs another priceless neolithic battle axe from the display.

As she runs over to join the others, the Doctor shouts at her. "No!" he growls. "Go 'round the other side!" For once in her life, Amy silently obeys. They've got a job to finish.

Rory joins her on the other side of the egg. Two or three solid hits later, small fault lines appear in the eggshell. Jenny notices immediately and looks up at the Doctor. "Keep going," he tells her. "Make 'em a bit bigger."

Jenny, however, is actively ignoring him. She steps up to the crack and listens intently. She'd only just heard it before, but every time the egg is struck, she hears it again. Screams. Shouts for help.

She leaps back. Looks up at her father. She knows that his screwdriver could shatter the egg, effortlessly now that it's cracked. Why isn't he just _ending_ this? Josh is _in_ there!

The Doctor gives her a slightly critical look. Without breaking eye contact, he strikes the egg with an excessive amount of force. She manages to meet his eyes, but still. She can't quite breathe. She's had nightmares about this look. Then he nods at her, and she doesn't feel faint anymore.

The Doctor is many things, but there are several things he is not. He is not a people person. He is, of course, charismatic and always up for a chat, but that's about where it ends. Where his social skills fall apart is in the place where he's standing, where his daughter's standing aghast, looking at him as if she's about to start crying for the second time that evening.

If the Doctor had ever been an observant sort of person, he might have recognized her look of complete terror. If he had ever been a perceptive sort of person, he might have noticed that she'd only gotten upset when she saw his reaction to her.

Of course, the Doctor is neither observant nor perceptive, and he thinks she's upset because her best friend's son is in danger. Which she is, of course, but that's not what's got her pale and shaking. He does see that she is upset, though, and briefly debates shattering the egg with his screwdriver. He can't though, because the amount of pressure currently building up in the eggshell would almost certainly cause the egg to shatter with almost explosive force. The kids inside would be in even more danger. If some of the pressure is relieved, though...

He makes a point of striking the egg with a bit of extra force, ignoring the searing pain in his shoulders, in the hope that one good hit will open up the egg. Which it does. A bit of eggshell clatters to the floor, and a small hole appears. A small stream of clear viscous fluid shoots out of the hole.

Jenny shouts in triumph, and immediately starts pulling at the eggshell with her bare hands, calling out to Josh the entire time. Amy and Rory quickly join her, and between the three of them the hole quickly expands.

When the hole is large enough to climb through, Jenny sticks her arm inside the egg. "Grab my hand!" she shouts. "I'll pull you out!"

"Step back," the Doctor says to her. "I'm going to shatter it." And then he does.

* * *

Fifteen. That's how many seven year-olds were inside the egg. Amy only starts panicking when she sees the fifteen sodden children lying lifelessly on the floor. Jenny only sees one, though, and she immediately rushes to his side. She calls his name, wipes the fluid from his face, picks him up and cradles him in her lap.

"Josh," she murmurs into his ear, "we've got you. You're safe." He doesn't reply.

"They're not moving," she says loudly. "Why aren't they moving? Doctor, why aren't they moving?"

"Paralyzed, I imagine," the Doctor replies. "Something in this stuff, I imagine. Got to keep them still."

Amy lets out a deep breath, but she only feels slightly better.

Rory kneels beside a little girl whose eyes are open. "I'm Rory," he tells her. "I'm a nurse. Don't worry, we're going to get you home. First thing, though, we've got to get all this stuff off of you." He wipes her face with his sleeve.

Looking at his sleeve, which is now completely sodden, he quickly excuses himself and heads to the TARDIS. "I'll be right back."

The Doctor, who was scanning the puddle of fluid on the floor, calls to him, "Grab the anti-paralytic. It's yellow. And some syringes. A lot of syringes."

"The stuff causes paralysis?" Amy asks.

He nods. They both look over at Jenny, who's practically covered in the gunk.

"She'll be fine. It won't affect her that much."

Josh is awake. Jenny's grinning down at him. "Hey, there," she says.

Josh's lips are moving, and some sound is coming out, but it's not intelligible. He's trying, though, and soon he's able to speak.

"Where were you?" he mumbles.

Of _course_ that'd be the first thing he'd say. Tenacious little monster, she thinks, not without a small amount of affection. She thinks back to all the times she'd said something inappropriate around him, and how his first impulse was always to tell his mum exactly what she'd said. And then remind Jenny about it for weeks afterwards, as if the whole thing was a grand joke. It's the main reason she doesn't swear anymore. As much.

"Well," she drawls, "I met my dad."

His eyes widen. It's not really computing. He'd never really thought of Jenny having a family. Other than him and his mum.

"And he's got a space ship. It's also a time machine. That's how we couldn't find each other. He dropped me off in Birmingham, and then he couldn't get the timing right to pick me up."

Most of Josh's face muscles are still partially paralyzed, but he's still able to express his disbelief with a look.

"No!" Jenny laughs. "I mean it. He's right over there!"

The Doctor's attention is drawn by her laugh, and he comes over to wave at Josh. "Hello," he says to Josh. "I'm Jenny's dad."

"I just told him that. He doesn't believe me," Jenny tells him.

The Doctor smiles and kneels by Josh's feet. "What'd she tell you? That I've got a time machine? That I'm an alien? She's right."

Josh's eyes bulge a bit more. "Sorry. I didn't mention the alien thing," Jenny says to him. "To be fair, you're taking it a hell of a lot better than your mum."

"You've got a spaceship?" he asks the Doctor. He nods. "Can I have a go?"

"No!" the Doctor yelps. "Definitely not! Do you have any idea how long it takes to get the certifications to pilot a TARDIS?"

"He just wants a ride," Jenny interjects. She's technically lying, but really, the kid's asking for a bit much. He'll just have to settle for a ride.

"Oh! That's more like it. _That_ can certainly be arranged." Josh grins in triumph. He'd only really wanted a ride.

Jenny's just remembered something. "Your mum said we can't go for ice cream."

"But if my dad says it's all right, we can go a bit into the future. And _then_ we can have ice cream."

The Doctor whispers something into her ear. "Oh. Maybe not...er," she says.

"Apparently it's not good for kids to go on the TARDIS. It can mess with their development. Tell you what. I'll _bring_ you some ice cream. From space. Space ice cream.

Cause I'm going to go away with him. I've been waiting for him for a very long time."

Josh's face falls, and he's about to protest, when she continues speaking. "I'll come back, though. I'll come back, and I'll bring you weird space ice cream. Yes," she says, resolute, "I _will_ be back. Until then, don't spend your time waiting for me. Look into the sky, and make a list of places you want to go. When you're old enough, we can go there."

Josh looks away, and he's silent for a long few seconds. Jenny's hearts break slightly. She's never been any good at this. She's far better at faking her death.

"Er," she says, "I've got to help some of the other kids. Can you move a bit so I can stand up?"

She looks down at her lap, and it's only then that she realizes he's not on her lap anymore. "Shit," she groans. "Has Rory got that anti-paralytic drug yet?"

* * *

The anti-paralytic only takes a few seconds to work on Jenny, in stark contrast to the fifteen others who were affected by the egg's paralytic amniotic fluid. After about thirty seconds, a few of them are able to move their arms, but none of them are off the floor. Rory is in nurse-mode, calming the children down while he and Amy wipe the fluid off their faces and hands with a few woollen ponchos he found in a spare cupboard.

Then everything goes absolutely insane.

The police burst into the room, bomb-sniffing dogs barking and alarms sounding. They see the scene and immediately begin shouting at the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Jenny. Of _course_ they're going to be arrested, Rory inwardly grumbles. What else are they going to do?

The policemens' attention is quickly diverted, however, when they notice the giant yellowish hairless mammal beside them. He's surprisingly animated, given the size of the lump on his head Amy gave him. He snuffles at them. They tase him. As you would.

The Doctor rushes to his side as the animal falls to the floor again. This time, though, he's frantically searching for a pulse. He lifts up its paw and feels for a heartbeat. After several tense seconds, his face falls. He stands up and faces the policeman who tased him.

"You killed it. Just so you know," the Doctor says quietly. "It didn't do anything wrong. It was just _there._ Is that what you do? Is that what the human race does? Kill the scary things?"

"What am I saying? Of _course_ that's what the human race does. Over and over again. And time and time again I make excuses. ' _They were scared',_ I say. ' _They didn't know what they were doing', 'they were just trying to protect other people.'_ That's what I keep on telling myself.

"But how could you not have known? How could you not have known that _electrocuting something would kill it?_ You weren't trying to protect anyone. You just _reacted._ You saw something different and you decided to kill it. Of course you did. You're only human."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Amy and Rory. "If it weren't for them..." he murmurs, his anger falling away.

He shakes his head, sighs. "That animal was looking for its egg. That," he said dully, gesturing toward the mess of fluid and eggshell, "was its egg. The egg gets the nutrients to sustain the foetus by absorbing organic matter, most likely plant matter, judging by the other times I've seen this. Those children touched the egg and were absorbed into the egg. We got them out. Any questions?"

When no one says anything, the Doctor continues. "Fine then. We'll be off. Call an ambulance. And don't touch the fluid. It causes temporary paralysis."

With that, he turns to leave, Jenny on his heels. Amy's not that far behind. Rory gives the policemen a brief apologetic grin. They've certainly got their work cut out for them.

Over her shoulder, Jenny calls, "Mrs Beal. That's their teacher."

The Doctor looks down at her, questioning. She shrugs.


	14. Part 1, Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This'll probably be the last italics you'll be seeing for a while.

_Before she takes a final step out of the room, she feels a strong compulsion to turn and look at the rock again. One last look, she thinks, won't do any harm. It's a silly urge, but a harmless one. She turns around to look at the rock, smooth and strange and out of place in the middle of the neolithic weapon exhibit. Completely smooth. The hand carving is gone.  
_

_Jenny thinks she might know where Josh is._

_She approaches the rock from another angle, and sees another hand print.  
_

_"Josh?" She calls his name, and she sees the hand move. Then an almost inaudible sound comes from the rock. Jenny leans forward. It sounds like a scream._

_Jenny's pretty sure she knows where Josh is._

_It makes no sense, but it's somehow the only thing that does. And she has to save him. In a lot of ways, he's the most important thing in the world to her. He's trusted her completely since the moment he was born. How could she betray that trust? She's not like_ him _._

_The most important thing, she reminds herself, is to get the rock open. She may be slightly stronger than an average human her size, but she's also only about forty-three kilos, and for a moment she's overwhelmed by the task._

_She sees the axes in their display, and an idea immediately begins to form. Her eyes dart around the room. She sees a metallic post, the kind museums use for red velvet barriers. On the top is a small sign, explicitly stating 'DO NOT TOUCH'. She wonders if the sign is what made Josh want to touch the rock in the first place. Probably._

_Jenny chucks the sign at the display case, shattering the glass. She grabs the first neolithic axe she can get her hands on and immediately begins hammering away at the rock._

_She manages to crack the rock's surface, and when fluid starts to seep through the cracks, she's genuinely surprised. This cannot be a rock. She has no idea what this thing is. Hopefully it's not alive._

_When the cracks splinter and pieces of the exterior layer chip off, the fluid goes from a trickle to a burst. The pressure of the liquid trying to escape the inside of the rock is what ends up creating a hole in the rock. Jenny hits that weak spot over and over again, trying to make the hole wider. What she doesn't notice is that she's not alone._

_From the far end of the room is a loud roar. Jenny stops what she's doing, sees it, and gapes. She's never seen anything like it. It's huge, winged, and has very large teeth, which are currently bared at her. She tries to keep swinging at the rock, but the thing looks like it's about to attack. It doesn't, just stands slightly behind her and sniffs at her hair. She takes that as approval and keeps on swinging._

_When the hole is large enough for a child to squeeze through, she sticks her hand in and feels around inside the rock. She feels something solid and grabs on to it. Pulls on it. It's a child's leg._

_The child is weak, and quickly losing the ability to move, but she was able to get out mostly on her own. Jenny smiles weakly at her, and sticks her arm back in again. Her back, oddly enough, is sort of tingling._

_Jenny helps another four children out of the rock, but they must have realized what was going on, because the rest just kind of flop out, half paralyzed. They help each other out, and collapse into a pool of paralysis and exhaustion. Jenny doesn't say much, looks for Josh among the pile of semi-conscious bodies._

_She sees a shock of red hair and immediately pulls him to her. Kneeling on the floor, she grabs his wrist and feels a strong pulse. Thank god. Jenny sets him on the floor and stands up to face the other kids. The pain as she stands up is unbearable._

_The animal is directly above her, and the second the two make eye contact, it opens its mouth and a stream of liquid hits her in the face. It just sprayed her with acid. Probably did the same thing to her back earlier._

_She might have survived if she'd only been hit in the back, she thinks to herself. There's no way she can survive this. She's going to die. This is what's going to kill her. Again._

_The pain escalates from unbearable to excruciating, and she can't even imagine what her face must look like. Like a nightmare. She knows her eyes are going(dissolving), but she manages to navigate her way out of the room. Josh_ cannot  _see her like this. In the distance, she vaguely registers a commotion, a siren, men yelling. What's left of her lips grin. Josh is safe._

 

_She's burning. And she's screaming. She thinks she's screaming, anyway. But really, the burning's so painful that she's not really focusing on much else.  
_

_She thinks about that time she saw_ him _in that battlefield, and how strange he looked with the cut on his head and the strange coloured blood pouring down his face. She wonders if her face looks like that right now. Probably not. He had been cut. Her face is melting. There's a difference.  
_

_Of course he'd get away with a cut on his face, or less. Of course when faced with the exact same situation he'd walk away unscathed while she'd die. Every time she's seen him, she ends up dying. And then he leaves her. Like he already knows what she is. Like it's her fault.  
_

_Which of course it is. It's her fault she can't manage a simple spacecraft, can't save all these kids. It's her fault that she's somehow lacking. She's incomplete; a bad copy. He knew that, and then he left her here.  
_

_And damn it, she's tried, and she couldn't do it. Next time-_

_The pain changes. She remembers this pain.  
_

_Next time, she thinks, next time I'm not going to try to be like him. How could she, when he's looked her in the eye, seen everything she is, and rejected her? Twice? How pathetic is she for spending so much time trying to please him? Why should she bother?  
_

_Next time, she thinks, I'm-_

 

_I'm-_

 

_I'm awake._

 

_She looks around. She's very much not in a museum. She's in a white box. A cold white box. Why am I in a cold white box? How do I get out of the cold white box?_

_She does the last constructive thing she remembers doing, and that is hitting. Very hard. She kicks and screams and dents the sides of the box with her angry fists until the thing opens at her feet._

_It's only then that she realizes she's laying down, and she quickly corrects that. She sits up and hits her head on the top of the box. Curses._

_The voice is a bit different, but she's not in a position to care. What she cares about is the frightened-looking young woman in front of her. She's shivering in fear and brandishing a knife. Granted, it's a small knife, but she's not in the mood for talking. What she is in the mood for is getting out of this place._

_The woman approaches, and her long suppressed fighting instincts come back. The girl screams for help, scratches her new arms, but the fact is when that girl's neck is between her hands, the knife clatters to the floor. Maybe she could have let go, but she doesn't._

_Eventually the girl stops screaming. She silently drops to the floor. The girl might be dead. Hmm. She checks. Yes. She's dead._

_She takes a look at the girl's body. It's small and slender, like she used to be, flawless dark skin like she'd always envied. Maybe that's her in the future. Maybe she just killed herself. That thought makes her want to laugh. How many times, how many lonely long nights did she spend thinking about that, thinking about how_ he'd  _left her, about how much longer she'd be able to stand this life-_

_She's a lot stronger than she was, bigger too. That's the only way she could have killed the girl so quickly. Interesting. She's never been proper big before._

_She grabs the little knife off the floor, and finally realizes where she is. A morgue. Eugh. How depressing. And she's only wearing a sheet; after all, corpses don't need modesty. She drapes it around herself and looks for a conveniently placed escape window._

_Only when she's standing in the alley outside the morgue, rearranging the sheet around her shoulders does she realize something's a bit off. She probably should have cared more about that girl. It_ was  _an accident, but still, she probably should be upset about the fact that the girl's dead. But yeah, there's something off about this body, she thinks, as she trips on a rock and falls to the ground (again). Something with the vision. I'll probably need glasses._

_It's probably a side effect of regeneration, accidentally killing the girl, she thinks. Regrowing a brain probably makes one a bit wacky for a bit. And she's got a brand new body, both bigger and stronger than she's used to. No wonder she killed the girl._

 

 


	15. Part 1, Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guyyyys. This is the last chapter of Part 1! It's all fluffy and filled with feelings. It's like an awkward but heartfelt hug. Next few weeks will be Part 2 (which is less of a part and more of an interlude, but hey, I make the rules) and then I'll start posting Part 3.  
> Next week: River Song. Part 2. Short sentences. 2nd person narration.

As they're walking away from the police officers, the Doctor remembers something. He stops short, his stony expression softening.

"Did I ever tell you," the Doctor asks Jenny, "how it all works?"

She thinks to herself. "I don't think so," she replies. "Wait. How _what_ works?"

That, apparently, was the correct answer, because the Doctor's face lit up. He grabbed her hand and pulled her away from a smiling Amy and Rory.

"Time travel!" he proclaimed. "Time and space and adventures and exciting, beautiful things!"

"Right then, how does it work?" she asked, trying not to smile and failing miserably.

"It's in the next room," he tells her.

"What is?"

He bounds off, beckoning her to follow. When she reaches him, he's standing in the lobby leaning against a police box. He pats the wood and winks at Jenny.

"A police box?"

"Not exactly," he tells her. At her questioning eyebrow, he reaches over and knocks on the door. "Go on. Have a look."

She takes a few steps inside, and he's right beside her, eagerly peering at her expression.

"It's called the TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space," he tells her. She doesn't listen. She's dreamed of this for ninety-three years.

"How-"

"Do I fit it all inside the box?" the Doctor cuts her off. "Well, it's simple, really. It's a separate dimension. All the stuff out there-" and here he gestures toward the door, "is in a different place than here. The doorway's the interesting part. That's what connects the inside to the outside."

"That's not...that's not what I was going to ask," Jenny states flatly, trying not to laugh. She gives up, and breaks out into a near-hysterical giggle.

The Doctor, caught up in the moment, laughs with her. His own glee fades when he notices the tears rolling down her face, how she's taking wild shallow breaths."Are you okay?"

Jenny sobers immediately. "I'm fine," she says, swallowing lungfuls of air between her words.

"Don't forget to use your bypass, you know, when you're having trouble breathing," the Doctor states reflexively. He used to hear that every day as a child. Even a thousand years on, it's still on a constant loop whenever he finds it hard to breathe. Of _course_ it's the first thing out of his mouth when she's hyperventilating.

He places a comforting hand on her shoulder and smiles at her. In between large gulps of air, she meets his eyes. "A bypass?"

The Doctor stares at her, utterly shocked. But then, he reasons, how _could_ she have even the slightest clue about her own anatomy? He sighs inwardly. He's got a lot to teach her.

When she's mostly calmed down, she smiles up at him. "You promised to show me how it worked."

That brings a smile back to his face. "'Course I will," he grins.

Then he has an idea. He bounds to the console and pulls a lever. "There you go. Simulation setting. See what you can make of it." So long as the door's closed, he thinks, they'll all probably be fine.

Jenny's eyes widen in disbelief. That being said, she doesn't wait for any encouragement before running to the console, poking at the buttons with gleeful abandon.

"In or out, Ponds!" he calls. "Your choice!"

Amy, who had been hovering in the doorway, lopes through the doorway and settles on the jump-seat beside the Doctor. Rory follows a bit behind, watching Jenny at the console.

Amy's not watching them. She smiles at the Doctor.

"So, your daughter, huh?"

"Yeah," he says. He's not smiling, but his eyes shine at her.

"Did you know?"

"No," he says quickly. "No, I didn't...I couldn't have."

"But it's good, yeah? Not being alone."

He looks at her, all affection. "Oh, Amy, I was never alone."

"You know what I mean," she replies, bumping his shoulder.

There's a brief pause. "Yeah," he acquiesces. "Yeah, it is."

Amy smiles, watching Jenny pulling levers in the distance. "We saved her. She was dead, and we saved her. And now you're not alone."

The Doctor's silent again. His face darkens.

"Yeah. Yeah, we did."

Rory points to a large lever. "He always pulls that one when we're going anywhere."

"No," Jenny laughs, beaming at him, "don't give me any hints!"

A second later, she pulls the aforementioned lever. The TARDIS chimes loudly and begins to make a churning 'take-off' sound.

"I think we just went somewhere," Rory tells her.

She waves a hand. "No, can't be. It's in simulation mode."

The Doctor rushes over and immediately pulls the display to face him. "No, Rory's right. We have moved." He peers closer at the monitor. "About...about five minutes. To the left."

Jenny's practically beside herself with glee, but Rory looks at the Doctor. "Five minutes to the _left_?"

"Exactly," the Doctor replies, nodding. "Not a big jump, but a jump nonetheless. Honestly, I've always found the little jumps to be the trickier ones. Some people just have a talent for it, I suppose." He gives Jenny a thumbs-up.

"It's much easier to make big changes than it is to make little ones. It's one of the stranger things about time, really," he continues, "that no one's ever really bothered to explain. Must just be the way time works.

Blundering in and accidentally killing Winston Churchill? Easy. Saving a single person from the Titanic? Nearly impossible. It's like circumstances conspire against you when you try to affect change on that sort of scale. That's why I don't bother. Just sightseeing. That's what we do," he tells Jenny. "We don't change little things. And we certainly don't change big things."

Jenny thinks over that, and eventually nods. "That makes sense. But then you helped me save the kids," she says.

He walks over to the other side of the console, and looking down at a button he's about to press, says, "Oh, that? Didn't have to do anything. Those kids practically saved themselves."

Jenny immediately realizes his implications. "Was it big, then? Is that bad? What we did, was it wrong?"

He sighs. "I honestly don't know."

"Did I do all right?" she asks, voice low and hesitant.

"All right?" he laughs, a short breath of air. "Jenny, you saved fifteen lives today. Of course that's all right."

He can see that she's not entirely convinced. "Look," he says seriously, grabbing her shoulders lightly, "I'll never be able to tell you if something's right or wrong. Just...just always make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons."

Jenny frowns at that, and she's about to say something, when the TARDIS shakes violently. "Off we go!" the Doctor shouts.

"Where're we going?" Amy asks from the jump-seat.

"No idea!"

* * *

 

**End Part 1**

**Part 2 begins 10/15/16**


	16. Part 2, Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, this takes place during the first (second?) episode of series 6. You know, where they're all running away from the US government? Remember how River ran to an unfinished skyscraper, got cornered, and jumped out of the building? This is just before that. Imagine River had a few minutes to catch her breath before the CIA caught up with her.

"There's three reasons why you won't shoot me." She holds up a hand lazily and begins counting off on her fingers. "One, I'm unarmed. You may be a lot of things, but you'd never shoot someone unarmed point-blank. You're not nearly as much of a cold-hearted killer as you'd like to me to think you are. Two, you don't want the sound of the blast tipping anyone off. And for good reason, they are under orders to take you alive or dead, which I'm sure you already knew."

Then she leans forward slightly and holds out a third finger. Her suddenly intense gaze captures your attention in a way that reminds you of something you can't quite remember. Try as you might, you can't make anything of it beyond the obvious fact that she wants you to listen.

"Thirdly, and certainly most importantly, there's something inside you telling you not to. You don't know what it is, just that there's this nagging little feeling inside your brain, whispering 'I know her, I KNOW her.' It's impossible, but there it is." She takes a step back and puts her hand down, breaking the spell.

You're inclined to think this is complete rubbish. She knows this, and with a lazy grin she drawls, "You're one of the very few people who could sense that, River, dear."

Somehow or another your blaster is aimed at her head, finger tense on the trigger. Her grin doesn't fade, but you can see her left hand sneak over to the end of her plait. Good. She notices you noticing, and quickly stops.

"They're on their way up, by the way," she continues. "And before you ask, no, I have nothing to do with them. Obviously." She gestures to her bright orange wool coat. "Do I look like the U.S. military? Can't even do the accent properly."

You quickly size her up. She's small, too small, and the twinkle in her eyes is far too unruly to ever belong to someone with military training. They way she's acting with a gun in her face, though. That gives you pause.

The girl correctly interprets your brief pause. "No, seriously. I'm not with them. I just want a little chat. We've got time. They do know you're up here, but luckily for both of us you chose to lead the chase into an unfinished building. The lift's not working yet, and they're on the stairs. Sixty flights of stairs. Can you imagine it?"

You can imagine it. You've just done it in heels.

"Oh, and don't worry about them. Everything I'm going to tell you they already know, and anyway, what they know hardly matters at this point." She's talking about the Silence. Who the hell is this girl?

"Who the hell are you?"

"Doesn't matter. I want something."

"What?"

"You were just at a funeral of sorts. A friend died. You told them to burn the body, which was quite correct of you, but before that happened, you took something off the body."

She takes a steadying breath and continues in a brisk, salesman-like tone, "You're going to meet up with your friend very soon, and I think, and as I'm sure you'll agree, that having two versions of the same sonic screwdriver in one place is inherently temporally unstable. It's also not the type of thing he's likely to miss, seeing as you've got it in your back pocket," she says, with a wicked grin and a crooked eyebrow, again reminding you of something you don't quite remember.

"And you want me to give it to you?" You shake your blaster slightly, reminding the girl that she's not exactly in the state to be making requests. You've taken your finger off the trigger, though.

"Ideally, yes." The tone of your voice doesn't seem to have fazed her. Then again, neither does the blaster.

"No. No, I'm not giving it to you," you say, scoffing at her. That's patently ridiculous.

"River," she says with a slight sigh, as if she knew that it wasn't going to be simple but is thoroughly annoyed nonetheless, "please just give me the screwdriver."

It sounds as though it pains her to say the word 'please'. You take a slight joy in that.

"I really don't want to have to take it from you." She pauses. "But I will."

You give her an incredulous look and she raises an eyebrow in challenge. Then you see it. She's standing in a relaxed stance, and the coat covered most of it up, but underneath that every line of her wiry little body is tensed. You were wrong. She's a soldier through and through.

Every instinct, human or otherwise, is telling you to stop and analyze the situation. You've got at least 10 kg on her. You've also got the blaster. Can't forget the blaster. She's got knowledge she shouldn't, a hell of a poker face, and an obvious death wish. It's a bit of a draw, really.

Something rustles the plastic sheeting behind you. You whirl around, ready to fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 will be two parts. This originally stood alone as a one-shot. Times change, apparently. Hope you all like it. :)


	17. Part 2, Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANNND that's it for part 2. Part 3 is still a semi-embryonic mess (essentially ten thousand words and a detailed outline), but it's a lot of fun. I'll probably put a few chapters up before my term papers really start kicking my ass, but don't expect anything close to a standardized posting schedule until the term's over. You all are the best bunch of readers any fanfic writer could ask for. I mean that. From the bottom of my heart. :)

_Something rustles the plastic sheeting behind you. You whirl around, ready to fire._

Nothing.

It was nothing.

The girl's face is white, and she's leaning against the half-finished door frame. She looks away from the middle distance behind your head and straightens up, a defiant look in her eye. It's like she's daring you to chastise her weakness. Which, of course, you do.

"Everything all right?" you ask her brusquely. Her eyes dart to meet yours, and you see something familiar in them. You're not quite willing to think about who it is she reminds you of.

"Fine," she says, and her hand creeps up again to play with the end of her plait. It's a rather obvious little nervous habit, and you wonder why she seems to be unable to control it. Unless she doesn't want to. Of course, it could be a ruse, an affectation designed to throw you off, designed to make you underestimate her. Everything you know about this girl so far suggests that's well within her abilities. You're not quite sure about that, though. She's still getting over the worst of her shock. Her face still has that deathly pallor, and while she doesn't look any physically weaker than she was a few seconds ago, she's shaking. You have no idea what could have scared her that badly.

She notices you watching her and scowls. "Problem?"

Her scowl reminds you a bit of yourself. That affects you more than you'd like. She was right. All these years, and somehow you're not a killer anymore. Doesn't mean you're going to take her home and give her a cup of tea.

"Sure you still want a fight?" It's not even like you have a home to take her to. You wouldn't do it anyway. You're not cut out to be a mother, and the only person you'd ever want to do it with is...yeah. It's been three months of running, and you still haven't stopped to think about what happened in Utah. This is why you don't think about your life.

The scared little girl is mostly gone, but you can still see vestiges of it in her eyes when she asks you with an impatient grumble, "How'd you mean?"

"I mean you don't look like you're quite able to hurt anyone at the moment." Or at all, really, but you'd be an idiot to trust appearances. She's far too good at the posturing to be simply a scared little girl. Your senses are screaming at you to stop provoking her into attack, but you're not sure who you're trying to protect.

"I wouldn't. Hurt you, that is." The words, although honest, have a bit of bitterness laced through them.

"We're really running out of time here," she says. The girl holds out her hand. Just like that, the tense standoff resumes itself, you with your blaster in hand, her with her deceptively calm stance and lazy grin. "River. Give me the screwdriver."

"Who are you?" You're not giving her the screwdriver, but you're firmly resolved to get answers out of this girl.

"Give me the screwdriver." She's getting impatient. Then again, so are you.

"Who are you?"

"For the love of god, River, just GIVE ME MY SCREWDRIVER!" The girl roars.

All the observations you've been making this whole time fly out of your head, replaced with a sudden jerking sensation, like on a wildly rocking boat. Everything that had been bothering you about this girl drifts slowly away as you view it in context. Of course. That makes sense. Who else could it be? Still, you've never met this version before, and that simultaneously excites you and scares you.

The girl(could she be him?) is watching you with a Cheshire-cat grin. The slip was calculated, you realize. That doesn't make it any more or less legitimate in your eyes. That's exactly the sort of thing he'd do. For a mysterious time travelling alien with no name, he always did like shrouding himself in mystery.

She smiles tensely at your scrutiny. Slowly you lower your blaster, eyes fixed on her, daring her to say something, to prove it isn't true. As if to prove her point, her small tense smile remains fixed on her face as she looks into your eyes with the same intense gaze you've seen a million times before. You've dreamed about that look. It's not filled with the love you'd want, but it's the one you've seen, the one you're familiar with. It's his.

You continue staring into her eyes, unable to look away, even as your blaster moves to its holster and your hand moves to your back pocket. When that happens, you wait for her reaction. There's no widening of the eyes, no grin of triumph, which is what you'd expect if she wasn't who she says she is.

All that happens is that she keeps her eyes locked onto yours, almost as if she's begging you to understand something. You understand completely. Gingerly, you hold out the screwdriver.

Her eyes snap down to the screwdriver, and her fringe covers her eyes just so. You were hoping for a glimpse into what she might be thinking. In retrospect, though, that's ridiculous. When have you ever been able to tell what's on his mind? Her hand reaches for it slowly, and you unclasp your fist so she can take it from your hand.

"You really are him?" You ask, as she gazes at the screwdriver resting in both her hands like some sort of sacred relic.

She slowly lifts her head to look up at you. You've always thought of yourself as the one who's seen him at his worst, seen him at his best. Never have you seen him look so broken, so lost. This is different. This is bad.

With unshed tears in her wild eyes, she says to you, "For all intents and purposes."

"Where are you going?"

"On," she says simply.

"Can I come?" That comes out sounding a lot more vulnerable than you intended.

"Answer me this. Have you ever seen me before?" You both know the answer. There's no need to say it aloud. "Then no."

"Back to front," you say softly. You've heard it many times before, and you'll say it many times in the future. That doesn't stop you from cursing it.

"Yes. Back to front," she repeats. You may not know what's in your future, but you know you've given him your forever. Why is it he can't, or won't? For the first time in a long time, you're angry at something larger than the two of you.

You can hear the sound of feet on the stairs. They're moving fast. You've got less than seconds left.

"I'm leaving now," she states.

"Wait." You can't let him leave like this.

Before she can turn to go, you say your last. "I'm sorry!"

"Yeah." It's a breath, a tired and resigned affirmation. She looks up at you, and you see everything that neither of you have ever said, all the 'sorrys' and the 'I forgive yous' and the 'I love yous'. It's a different 'sorry' this time, a different 'I forgive you', a different 'I love you', but it's really all right. It makes sense in a way. Both of you are tired of apologizing.

She's gone. Again. But he'll be back soon. He's always lying.

The door opens, and you get ready to jump.


	18. Part 3, Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently grad school is hard. Who knew? Anyway, here's the beginning of Part 3. :)

"How about a bit in the future?"

The Doctor's hand is hovering over the lever, trembling. In the back of his mind, he can hear the ambient noise in the TARDIS, the squeal and clank of intricate and ancient machinery. The clack of Amy's unsensible yet flattering footwear on the glass floor. The drone from whatever song Rory's playing on his iPhone, and the slightly out-of-tune humming that he can't seem to stop whenever his favourite song starts playing. The whine as the TARDIS' rustier mechanisms grate up against each other. All of that, to the Doctor, is ambient noise.

What he can't seem to ignore is the tinny metallic clanking coming from Jenny's direction. She's sitting on the floor, with a manual screwdriver tucked deep inside a small gizmo she's either building or breaking. Scattered around her is a small infinity of tiny metal doodads. A soldering iron lies ignored several feet away, and he's overcome with the urge to grab it and lock it away somewhere. She presses a button on the outside of the gizmo, and there's a whirring sound and a squeak of triumph.

He smiles at the look on her face, even if the noise itself is driving him insane.

The TARDIS tilts, caught in an eddy of vortex-stuff. He hears a plant fall over in a temporarily nearby room. He'll probably find it in a couple hundred years.

Amy's voice comes from near his shoulder. "Depends. How much?"

Rory looks up. "A bit in the what?" he asked, removing only a single earbud. It was, after all, his favourite song.

"Can I try?" He immediately looks over to Jenny, expecting to see her looking up at him. He realizes a moment too late that Amy's the one asking the question. He really should have thought more about this whole thing. It's been a while since he's had so many people travelling with him. Four people is dangerously close to a full TARDIS. And far too many for him to keep track of.

Rallying himself, he points at Rory. "The _future,_ Rory, honestly, were you even really listening?"

He then points at Amy. She steps back to avoid his finger. "No."

He whirls around to face Rory, who's watching him from his seat with an amused expression. When he points at him, he realizes exactly what Amy had asked him, thus causing him to swing back around, finger in her face. "Wait. No. Why would you want to do that?"

"Well, I figure if River Song can do it, and even Jenny's starting to," Jenny raises an eyebrow at that, "that it can't be too hard." Jenny's other eyebrow joins the first.

"I wasn't," Rory states lamely, knowing perfectly well that he was not going to be understood.

"Wasn't what?" the Doctor shakes his head to clear it. This situation is mad. Out of the corner of his eye he watches as Jenny, who has decided that she's probably going to have to defend herself at some point, floats over to the action and wordlessly continues fiddling with her gizmo. While no one's watching, the TARDIS reabsorbs the tiny metal parts she left scattered on the floor.

"Listening to you. I was watching her," Rory says, gesturing to Jenny and her gizmo, which has acquired a spinning attachment. It's a nice aesthetic touch.

"What's that?" he asks, bounding over and pointing at Jenny's spinning thing, making a point to act as if he hadn't seen it before, or rather, as if he hadn't been wanting to ask her all about it for hours.

She looks down. "I made it."

"What does it do? No, wait, don't tell me." He rips it from her hand and starts fiddling with it, the same way she just was. He keeps on fiddling with it. "How do you get it to stop spinning?"

"Er, you don't. That's all it does," she says, blushing.

"All it does it spin?" Now he's trying not to act disappointed. Judging by the look on her face, he's not doing a good job.

She shrugs and nods.

"Oh." He tries to think of something nice to say. "That's nice."

Before she can say anything else about the spinny thing, he shoves it back in her hands and bounds back to the console.

"Amy," he smiles over at her. "Past or future?"

She purses her lips, thinking. "Do we have to stay on Earth?"

"Thought it'd be a change of pace?"

"Doctor, we haven't left Earth in _months._ We were just in _Birmingham_ , for God's sake." She looks over at Jenny. "Not that there's anything wrong with it."

Jenny shrugs. Clearly it's all the same to her.

He thought he'd do something a little 'easy' for Jenny's first trip. Something fun. Like Victorian London. For some reason everyone loves Victorian London. He's got no idea why. At the same time, he wants to keep Amy happy. And Jenny...well, she's _probably_ not going to freak out at the sight of purple skies or slug-people. Still, he doesn't want to overwhelm her. He thinks of a perfect solution.

"How about the future? How about..." and here he waves his hands in front of his face, "a _space colony?_ Never brought you to any of those, have I, Pond?" Before she's able to respond, he says smugly, "Of course I haven't. I've been saving it. For a special occasion," he says, winking at Jenny.

"That's where I was born," she tells Rory. He smiles down at her and makes a thoughtful face, like he's genuinely interested in that information. In truth, he's actively trying to not think about the circumstances of her birth.

The Doctor briefly considers her use of the word 'born'. It's a harmless turn of phrase, something she's picked up on Earth, even if it is stunningly inaccurate. Still, something about it bothers him. She's not his child. Not really. There is, however, no real reason to correct her, other than to satisfy his own pedantry. And he knows it'll probably bother her, so he decides to quash that impulse.

Instead, he chooses to grin at her. "I know. I was there."

Her smile is probably worth it, he thinks.

Once the TARDIS has stopped shaking, he rushes over to the door, Jenny following on his heels. He flings himself across the doors, arms spread wide. She raises a questioning brow.

"Wait. We can't just go out there," he tells her. "We've got to check that it's safe to go out there. Check the environment. Make sure that we've gone to the right place."

Amy snorts. "Since when have you _ever_ bothered doing environment checks?"

He opens his mouth at her. Traitor.

"I-It's not about that," he responds, glaring at her, "it is _about_ setting a proper example." Amy gives Jenny a sideways glance, and they share a small smile.

"You _never_ do environment checks. You always just run out," Amy continues, her smile widening to a full-on grin. She'd forgotten how much _fun_ teasing him can be.

"Which is why I'm doing it now-"

"In fact, I remember the time when River Song-"

"I've been piloting this TARDIS for three thousand years!" The second the words come out of his mouth, he's aware of how childish he sounds. He'd blame his current face, but really it's more to do with him than with his current youthful appearance. He's never appreciated criticism from a member of a species that can't seem to stop trying to annihilate itself. Humans. The lemmings of the universe.

"She didn't even leave the handbrake-"

Right. At that exact moment, the Doctor decides that he's had enough. "I'm showing Jenny the _proper_ way to pilot a TARDIS, so that if she ever needs to rescue any of us, she won't land somewhere that will _kill her._ Or on a Tuesday. I have enough experience to know how to avoid those things. She doesn't. Are you _satisfied,_ Pond?"

Amy's eyes widen at his outburst. She's not quite sure why she's so pleased that she got a reaction from him. She looks over at Jenny to see her looking confused, and more than a bit awed. Before she can stop herself, she's opening her mouth to needle him again, but he's already pulled Jenny out of the TARDIS.

Rory, who's been watching them, smiles sadly at her. Like always, he knows what she's feeling better than she does. This time, she's not quite sure she wants to know.

Outside the TARDIS, Jenny's the first to speak. "Doesn't look like a space colony."

"What were you expecting?" the Doctor asks. He looks around and sees her point. It looks rather like Earth. He sniffs the air. It is Earth. Bit desolate, but still. Recognizably Earth.

He hums. "I suppose you're right. We're on Earth," he tells her. He can't help but imagine the look on Amy's face as soon as she finds out.

"Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, on a sort of volcanic island." He licks his finger and sticks it in the air. "Air's a bit...eugh," he grimaced.

"Sulphur?" Jenny muses, before sniffing the air. "No. Maybe? What do you think?"

"Sort of sulphur. Looks like something crashed over there," he replies, pointing to a plume of smoke in the distance.

"Mmm," she hums, mainly because she's not quite sure what else to say. Luckily that's not a problem for her, as the Doctor appears to have disappeared. Jenny looks around and notices him standing on a ridge some forty metres away, waving his arms like a roadside inflatable air-dancer outside a used car dealership.

"Jenny!" he calls, "over here!" She lets out a breath when she sees him and hurries to catch up with him.

When she gets to the ridge, she looks over at him with a bit of a grin. "Right," she breathes, "I forgot about the running."

The Doctor doesn't respond immediately. He's craning his neck trying to get a closer look at the source of the smoke. "Pretty sure that's a crash," he tells her.

"Are we going to help?" Jenny asks.

That makes him whip around, astonishment and a not a small amount of annoyance written on his face. "Of _course_ we're going to help. Why _wouldn't_ we help?"

"Well, you don't always help, do you?" she replies.

At the look on his face, she continues, talking faster and faster. "You can't. Sometimes. Like when there's big things. Right?"

He shakes his head in response. Apparently she'd completely missed the point of the 'big things/little things' speech he'd given her earlier. How could she not understand? After he'd put it so simply?

Right, to nip this in the bud. He takes in a deep breath. "I always at least _try,_ " he lets out. " _Always._ "

Jenny nods quickly, feeling a bit like she'd somehow failed a test.

"Ah, Ponds!" he exclaimed, beaming over her head. She turns around to see Amy and Rory climbing up the ridge. "Isn't that right, Ponds?"

"Isn't what right?" Rory replies.

Amy rolls her eyes. "Not sure what he said," she drawls. "We were, after all, all the way _over there."_

"Not important," the Doctor tells her. "What's important is just over that ridge."

"And what's over that ridge?"

In response, the Doctor winks at her and runs toward the smoke.

"He's got a few theories," Jenny says, before taking off after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked the start of Part 3! I'll update next Wednesday. I pinky promise.


End file.
